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THE 
SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



WooDRow Wilson 



PATRIOTISM THROUGH LITERATURE 

THE 
SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 



By 
LYMAN P. POWELL 

AND '' 

GERTRUDE W. POWELL 




RAND McNALLY & COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 



Copyright, iqi8 
By Rajsd McNally & Company 



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JUL Id lyid 

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THE CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The President's War Message Woodroiv Wilson 1 

America Samuel Francis Smith 5 

Clarion Harold T. Pulsifer 6 

Ye That Have Faith Owen Seaman 7 

The Meaning of Americanism . . . Charles Evans Hughes 8 

A Thanksgiving Marion Couthouy Smith 10 

America Bayard Taylor 12 

America Enters the War David Lloyd George 14 

Armageddon Sir Edwin Arnold 16 

What Did You See Out There, My Lad? 

John Oxenham 18 

America First Woodrow Wilson 20 

The New Banner Katrina Trask 26 

A Litany in the Desert . . .Alice Corbin Henderson 27 

Victory before Peace Albert Shaw 28 

Americans, Hail! Sir William Watson 30 

Comrades Richard Hovey 33 

Why We Must Win Frank 0. Lowden 34 

I Am an American Elias Lieberman 39 

The Searchlights Alfred Noyes 40 

The United States Comes of Age Hamilton Holt 42 

To America Charles Langbridge Morgan 43 

The Reveille Bret Harte 44 

Opposing Principles Talcott Williams 46 

Boston Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson 47 

Dies Irae — Dies Pacis John Oxenham 48 

Golden Boys Winifred M. Letts 49 

Why We Fight Theodore Roosevelt 50 

The Riderless Horse Harold T. Pulsifer 51 

A Cavalry Catch William Sharp 52 

A Lullaby G. R. Glasgow 52 



vi THE CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Our Common Heritage Arthur J. Balfour 54 

Peace Hymn for England and America 

George Huntington 57 

Malbrouk — ET Nous 58 

The Memorial Day Address Woodrow Wilson 59 

Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln 61 

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight 

Vachel Lindsay 62 

Union Virginia Fraser Boyle 63 

Supporting the Government Elihu Root 66 

"Breathes There the Man" Sir Walter Scott 71 

"Op Old Sat Freedom on the Heights" 

Alfred Tennyson 72 

The Present Crisis. James Russell Lowell 73 

Carry On! Robert W. Service 74 

Changes Ahead Marion- LeRoy Burton 76 

Hymn of Freedom Mary Perry King 79 

Patriotism Lyman Abbott 80 

Earth Calls to Heaven . . William Pierson Merrill 81 

The Little Star in the Window 

John Jerome Rooney 82 

The Battle between Right and Might 

Frank 0. Lowden 85 

From "Ode of Dedication" . . . .Hermann Hagedorn 90 

"Over" There" Harvey M. Watts 91 

To THE American People Bayard Taylor 91 

The Education We Are Fighting For. . Henry Van Dyke 93 

A Hymn Robert Grant 95 

The Return John Freeman 97 

Fighting Battles with Speech and Pen 

Charles Evans Hughes 98 

Give Us Men Bishop of Exeter 102 

Be Strong Maltbie Davenport Babcock 103 



THE CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

The Men at the Front David Lloyd George 104 

The Connaught Rangers.' Winifred M. Letts 105 

"Baddest Boy" 106 

Flag-Day Address Woodrow Wilson 108 

The Star-Spangled Banner Francis Scott Key 110 

Makers of the Flag Franklin K. Lane 112 

The Flag Edith M. Thomas 114 

Follow the Flag Theodore Marburg 115 

The Kid Has Gone to the Colors 

William Herschell 1 17 

Putting the Flag on the Firing Line . Theodore Roosevelt 1 19 

Fame's True Applause. ..George Edward Woodherry 121 

Stand by the Flag 122 

The Call to Battle Gilbert Sheldon 122 

The World Significance of the War . William H. Taft 124 

Together Alfred Austin 126 

Peace Elizabeth Barrett Browning 127 

The Call of the Republic George Haven Putnam 128 

The Building of the Ship 

Henry Wadsivorth Longfellow 129 

"It Is Time" Lloyd Roberts 130 

A Simple Song for America. . . .Karle Wilson Baker 130 

Our Moral Leadership Edmund J. James 132 

"Oh Mother of a Mighty Race" 

William Cullen Bryant 134 

On Patrol 136 

England Unsheathes the Sworb. . .Herbert H. Asquith 138 

The Call R. E. Vernede 140 

An Invocation Beatrice Barry 142 

The Spires of Oxford Winifred M. Letts 143 

To the Army! King Albert 144 

The Prayer Amelia Josephine Burr 145 

In Flanders Fields John McCrae 147 



viii THE CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Belgium Shall Rise Cardinal Mercier 148 

To Belgium Eden Phillpotts 151 

Liege ^^V William Watson 152 

La Brabanconne Florence Attenhorough 153 

The Fighters of France Anatole France 154 

The Marseillaise Rouget de Lisle 156 

Your Lad, and My Lad Randall Parrish 157 

Lille, Laon, and St. Die John H. Finley 159 

ViviANi AT Springfield 162 

The Fatherland James Russell Lowell 165 

The Blue and the Gray in France . George M. Mayo 165 

A Welcome to Marshall Joffre. .Charles S. Whitman 166 

The Nightingales of Flanders . Grace H. Conkling 168 

Somewhere in France Harvey M. Watts , 169 

The Children of France . Marshal J of re 170 

The Victor of the Marne 

Robert Underwood Johnson 170 

Grand-pere Robert W. Service 171 

Children of France Gertrude Robinson 172 

Fraternal Message to America. . .Gabriele d'Annunzio 174 

On the Italian Front George E. Woodberry 175 

Declaration of War by It kly. Gabriele d'Annunzio 175 

Out of Rome Clinton Scollard 176 

To THE Young Men of Italy . . . Giuseppe Mazzini 177 

Serbia's Sacrifice Major Stobart 180 

Serbia Amelia Josephine Burr 181 

Scarred 182 

Salonika in November Brian Hill 182 

Woman's Duty Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker 184 

The Brave at Home Thomas B. Read 186 

To Woman Lawrence Binyon 187 

Mothering .H. Buchanan Ryley 187 

To A Mother Eden Phillpotts 188 

Any Woman to a Soldier. . .Grace £//e;7 Channing 189 



THE CONTENTS ix 

page- 
Labor Must Bear Its Part Woodrow Wilson 191 

The Keepers of the Light Theodosia Garrison 194 

A Song op Service Theodosia Garrison 194 

More Than a Name Samuel Gompers 196 

What the State Is Sir William Jones 198 

Soldiers of Freedom Katharine Lee Bates 199 

The Khaki Henry Edward Warner 200 

Lessons of the War Theodore Roosevelt 201 

America Resurgent Wendell Phillip Stafford 202 

In Forty West 203 

Soldiers All Daniel M. Henderson 204 

Comrades in a Common Cause Bishop Brent 206 

Britons and Guests Edith M. Thomas 207 

Christ in Flanders A British Soldier 208 

Onward, Christian Soldiers S. Baring-Gould 209 

England's Case Herbert H. Asquith 211 

Canada to England Wilfred Campbell 211 

Australia to England Archibald T. Strong 213 

India to England Nizamat Jung 214 

A Message to Ireland Florence Gof 215 

Going Home Robert W. Service 216 

Canada Stands Fast Sir Robert Laird Borden 218 

To Canada Katharine Lee Bates 219 

A Cry from the Canadian Hills . . Lilian Leveridge 221 

The Reckoning Theodore G. Roberts 223 

A League of Nations Woodrow Wilson 225 

A Prayer in Time of War Alfred Noyes 226 

America to France and Great Britain 

Harold T. Pulsifer 227 

The Challenge H. T. Suddrith 229 

The Holy Quest Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 230 

Hands All Round Alfred Tennyson 232 

Carry On ! John Oxenham 233 



X THE CONTENTS 

PAGE 

To THE United States of America . . Robert Bridges 234 

The Western Land Caroline Hazard 234 

A Message to America Romain Rolland 236 

America the Beautiful Katharine Lee Bates 237 

We Shall Remember Them .... James Terry White 239 

Keep the Road of Democracy Open . . William E. Borah 240 

Resurrexit Grace Ellery Channing 243 

The Road to France Daniel M. Henderson 244 

The Guards Came Through Conan Doyle 245 

World Reconstruction Oscar S. Straus 248 

Judgment Day John Oxenham 249 

The Universal Peace Alfred Tennyson 249 

The Year Before Us John Timothy Stone 251 

Lord, Give Me a Place 253 

God Save Our Splendid Men 253 

The Red Cross Woodrow Wilson 255 

Behind the Guns Henry Edward Warner 259 

The Red Cross Spirit vSpeaks John H. Finley 260 

Grey Knitting Katherine Hale 261 

The Task of the Red Cross Newton D. Baker 263 

Youth Speaks to Youth 264 

The Red Cross Nurses Thomas L. Masson 265 

With the American Red Cross in Frace 

Henry P. Davison 267 

The Feet of the Children Nora A . Smith 269 

When the Boys Come Home John Hay 271 



A LIST OF THE PORTRAITS 

FACING PAGE 

Woodrow Wilson Frontispiece 

Charles Evans Hughes 8 

David Lloyd George 14 

Albert Shaw 28 

Frank 0. Lowden ■ 34 

Hamilton Holt 42 

Talcott Williams 46 

Theodore Roosevelt 50 

-Arthur James Balfour 54 

Elihu Root 66 

Marion LeRoy Burton 76 

Lyman Abbott 80 

Franklin K. Lane .....'.... 112 

William Howard Taft 124 

George H. Putnam 128 

Edmund J. James 132 

King Albert 144 

.Cardinal Mercier 148 

M. Anatole France 154 

Rene Raphael Viviani 162 

Charles S. Whitman 166 

-Marshal Joffre 170 

Gabriele D'Annunzio 174 

Major St. Clair Stobart 180 

Samuel Gompers 196 

Bishop Brent 206 

Sir Robert Laird Borden 218 

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 230 

Romain Rolland 236 

Oscar S. Straus 248 

John Timothy Stone . 251 

Newton D. Baker 263 

I 

XI 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The compilers of this volume extend their grateful acknowl- 
edgments to the following authors and publishers for permission to 
use copyrighted selections: 

Harold T. Pulsifer, of The Outlook, for "Clarion" and "The 
Riderless Horse," published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Marion Couthouy Smith for "A Thanksgiving." 

Doran & Co. for John Oxenham's "What Did You See Out 
There, My Lad," "Dies Irae — Dies Pacis," and "Carry On"; 
Amelia Josephine Burr's "The Prayer," and the selection from 
Major Stobart's Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere. 

Katrina Trask for "The New Banner." 

Mrs. Alice Corbin Henderson and The Yale Review for "A 
Litany in the Desert"; The Yale Review for Winifred M. Letts' 
"The Connaught Rangers." 

Albert Shav/ for his editorial in the Revieiv of Reviews, "Victory 
before Peace." 

Small, Maynard & Company for Richard Hovey's "Comrades." 

Elias Lieberman and the Comhill Company for "I Am an 
American." 

Frederick A. Stokes & Co. for Alfred Noyes' "The Searchlights" 
and "A Prayer in Time of War." 

The Macmillan Company for Vachel Lindsay's "Abraham 
Lincoln Walks at Midnight," from The Congo and Other Poems; 
Archibald T. Strong's "Australia to England," and Eden Phillpotts' 
"To Belgium." 

E. P.Dutton & Co. for Winifred M. Letts' "Golden Boys" and 
"The Spires of Oxford, from The Spires of Oxford." 

Virginia Eraser Boyle for "Union," 

Collier's Weekly for Mary Perry King's "Hymn of Freedom." 

William Pierson Merrill for "Earth Calls to Heaven." 

John Jerome Rooney for "The Little Star in the Window." 

The Outlook for the stanza from Hermann Hagedorn's "Ode of 
Dedication," Daniel M. Henderson's "Soldiers All," and Harold T. 
Pulsifer's "America to France and Great Britain." 

Harvey M. Watts for "Over There " and "Somewhere in France." 

Robert Grant for "A Hymn," which appeared in Scribner's 
Magazine. 

Edith M . Thomas for "The Flag . " 

William Herschell for "The Kid Has Gone to the Colors," copy- 
right by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. 



xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Theodore Marburg for "Follow the Flag." 

George E. Woodberry for "Fame's True Applause" and " On the 
Italian Front." 

Lloyd Roberts for the stanza from "Come Quietly, Britain." 

Karle Wilson Baker for "A Simple Song for America." 

The New York Times for Beatrice Barry's "Invocation" and 
Edith M. Thomas' "Britons and Guests." 

Randall Parrish for "Your Lad, and My Lad." 

John H. Finley for "Lille, Laon, and St. Die." 

Grace Hazard Conkling and Everybody's Magazine for "The 
Nightingales of Flanders. "^ 

Thomas L. Masson, editor of Life, for his "Red Cross Nurses," 
which appeared in the Red Cross Magazine, and Gertrude Robinson's 
"The Children of France," published in Life. 

Clinton Scollard for "Out of Rome." 

John Lane Company for the selection from Emile Cammaerts' 
"King and Emperor." 

Amelia Josephine Burr and Everybody's Magazine for "Serbia." 

The Living Church for Lieutenant Ryley's "Mothering," which 
recently appeared in its columns. 

Grace EUery Channing for "Any Woman to a Soldier," which 
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, and "Resurrexit," which 
appeared in the Boston Transcript. 

McClure's Magazine for Theodosia Garrison's "Keepers of the 
Light" and "A Song of Service." 

Katharine Lee Bates for "America the Beautiful," published by 
Thomas Y. Crowell and Co., and "Soldiers of Freedom," which 
appeared in Good Housekeeping. 

Wendell Phillip Stafford and the Washington Evening Star for 
"America Resuj:gent." 

Fleming H. Revell for Wilfred Campbell's " Canada to England." 

Caroline Hazard for "The Western Land." 

The National Arts Club for Daniel M. Henderson's "The Road 
to France." 

Henry Edward Warner and the Richmond Times Dispatch for 
"Behind the Guns." 

Nora Archibald Smith for "The Feet of the Children," which 
appeared in The Outlook. 

Katherine Hale for "Grey Knitting." 

"Going Home," "Grand-pere," and "Carry On" are from 
Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, published by Barse & Hopkins, New 
York. 

The selections from John Hay, Bret Harte and Laurence Binyon 
are used by permission of and by special arrangement with the 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 



THE PREFACE 

The war at last is calling forth prose and poetry to 
match its cosmic character. Our President's addresses 
easily average higher taken as a group than any others 
made on either side of the ocean in intellectual compre- 
hensiveness, moral elevation, restrained feeling, and that 
rhythmic quality which one detects in some of Lincoln's 
greater speeches. 

But many other addresses are close seconds to our 
President's. Never in any previous national or world 
crisis have so many speakers risen to the dignity of the 
occasion. Even truer is this of verse, and more poems 
which promise to live have perhaps been written since 
the war began than in any other period so brief of human 
history". 

The Spirit of Democracy — unlike other books — aims to 
assemble in convenient arrangement, for school purposes, 
many of the most stirring speeches and most virile poems 
applicable to the present situation. In preparation of this 
book we have hoped to render it easier for busy teachers 
to avoid the more conventional readings and declama- 
tions, and instead to give their pupils the prose and verse 
certain to make them more loyal and intelligent patriots. 

The speeches of the war have been open to the entire 
world, but those brought together in this volume are 
believed to represent the great cause with special fitness. 

As to the verse, after the consideration of much of 
the bewildering variety that has appeared, we have 
included in this volume poems which will, it is hoped, 
reflect all of the various considerations involved. 

L. P. P. 
G. W. P. 



" T BELIEVE in the United States of 
America as a government of the 
people, by the people, for the people, 
whose just powers are derived from the 
consent of the governed; a democracy in 
a republic; a sovereign Nation of many 
sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and 
inseparable, established upon those prin- 
ciples of freedom, equality, justice, and 
humanity for which American patriots 
sacrificed their lives and fortunes. 

''I therefore believe it is my duty to my 
country to love it; to support its Consti- 
tution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; 
and to defend it against all enemies.'^ 



XVI 



THE 
SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

THE PRESIDENT'S WAR MESSAGE^ 

WOODROW WILSON 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session 
because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy 
to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither 
right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume 
the responsibility of making. 

On the third of February last I officially laid before you 
the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German 
Government that on and after the first day of February 
it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of 
humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that 
sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and 
Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the 
ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the 
Mediterranean. 

That had seemed to be the object of the German sub- 
marine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last 
year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained 
the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with 
its promise then given to us that passenger boats should 



iFrom the speech deUvered April 2, 191 7. 
2 I 



2 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

not be sunk and that due ^warning would be given to all 
other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy 
when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and 
care taken that their crews were given at least a fair 
chance to save their lives in their open boats. 

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Ves- 
sels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, 
their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been 
ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and with- 
out thought of help or mercy for those on board, 
the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of 
belligerents. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February 
last I thought it would suffice to assert our neutral rights 
with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful 
interference, our right to keep our people safe against 
unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, 
is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect out- 
laws, when used as the German submarines have been 
used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend 
ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has 
assvtmed that merchantmen would defend themselves 
against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase 
upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such cir- 
cumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to 
destroy them before they have shown their own intention. 
They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical 
character of the step I am taking and of the grave respon- 
sibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience 
to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the 
Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German 



THE PRESIDENT'S WAR MESSAGE 3 

Government to be in fact nothing less than war against 
the Government and people of the United States, that 
it formally accept the status of belligerent which has 
thus been thrust upon it and that it take immediate steps 
not only to put the country in a more thorough state of 
defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its 
resources to bring the Government of the German Empire 
to terms and end the war. 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace 
must be planted upon the tested foundations of political 
liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquests, no dominion. We* seek no indemnities for 
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we 
shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of 
the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those 
rights have been made as secure as the faith and the free- 
dom of nations can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish 
object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall 
wish to share with all free people, we shall, I feel confident, 
conduct our operations as belligerents without passion 
and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles 
of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as 
belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because 
we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or 
with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon 
them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible 
government which has thrown aside all considerations of 
humanity and of right and is running amuck. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We 
have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and 



4 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their 
government acted in entering the war. It was not with 
their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war 
determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in 
the old unhappy days, when peoples were nowhere con- 
sulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged 
in the interest of d3masties or of little groups of ambitious 
men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns 
and tools. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of 
the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing 
you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and 
sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this 
great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and 
disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be 
in the balance. 

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall 
fight for the things which we have always carried nearest 
our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who 
submit to authority to have a voice in their own Govern- 
ments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a 
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people 
as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make 
the world itself at last free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our for- 
tunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, 
with the pride of those who know that the day has come 
when America is privileged to spend her blood and her 
might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness 
and the peace which she has treasured. 

God helping her, she can do no other. 



AMERICA 
AMERICA 

SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH 

My country, 't is of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 

Of thee I sing; 
Land where my fathers died, 
Land of the Pilgrims' pride, 
From every mountain side 

Let freedom ring. 

My native coimtry, thee. 
Land of the noble free, 

Thy name I love ; 
I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills ; 
My heart with rapture thrills 

Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze, 
And ring from all the trees 

Sweet Freedom's song; 
Let mortal tongues awake. 
Let all that breathe partake. 
Let rocks their silence break. 

The sound prolong. 

Our fathers' God, to Thee, 
Author of liberty. 

To Thee we sing; 
Long may our land be bright 
With Freedom's holy light ; 
Protect us by Thy might, 

Great God, our King. 



THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 
CLARION 

HAROLD T. PULSIFER 

God send a prophet tongued with flame 
To sear the Nation's self-content; 
Lest writ in words of livid shame 
Ye read, eternal banishment. 

Dread banishment from those High Halls 
Your fathers builded wide and deep. 
Once, twice, and thrice the trumpet calls, - 
How long shall ye lie bound in sleep ? 

The skies are dark with homing ghosts : 
With Belgian blood the world is red : 
Through the salt sea in piteous hosts 
Still troop the phantoms of your dead ! 

Shrill-voiced your chosen leaders cry 
The need of freedom for your gold. 
Thank God the men at Concord lie 
Too deep to know what ye have sold. 

Was it for this the ancient hand 
Carved out the riches of your soil? 
Then let the sea blot out the land. 
The storm blot out the wasted toil ! 

Blot out the dream of Washington, 
Blot out the vision Lincoln knew. 
Blot out their hope of air and sun, 
Bring back the night they overthrew ! 



YE THAT HAVE FAITH 

Once, twice, and thrice the trumpet calls, — 
The sword is nigh, the sword is come ! 
Awake, O watchmen on the walls, 
And lift your dead hands to the drum ! 



YE THAT HAVE FAITH 

OWEN SEAMAN 

Ye that have faith to look with fearless eyes 
Beyond the tragedy of a world at strife. 
And know that out of death and night shall rise 
The dawn of ampler life, 

Rejoice, whatever anguish rend the heart, 
That God has given you a priceless dower, 
To live in these great times and have your part 
In Freedom's crowning hour. 

That ye may tell your sons who see the light 
High in the heavens — their heritage to take — 
"I saw the powers of Darkness put to flight; 
I saw the morning break." 



THE MEANING OF AMERICANISM ^ 

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 

We want something more than thrills in our patriotism 
— we want thought ; we want intelligence — a new birth 
of the sentiment of unity in the nation. 

My dream of America is America represented in public 
office by its best men working entirely for the good of the 
Republic and according to the laws and ordinances 
established by the people for the government of their 
conduct and not for the personal or political desires and 
ambitions; America working her institutions as they were 
intended to be worked, with men whose sole object shall 
be to secure the end for which the offices were designed. 

And if one will throw his personal fortunes to the 
winds, if he will perform in each place, high or low, the 
manifest obligation of that place, we will soon have those 
victories of democracy which will make the Fourth of 
July in its coming years a far finer and nobler day than 
it has ever been in the fortunate years of the past. 

When we are thinking of the ideals of democracy, we 
are thinking of the schools, and we deplore every condi- 
tion in which we find man lower than he should be under 
a free government, and we want greater victories of 
democracy that the level of success shall be raised. 

We are not a rash people; we are not filled with the 
spirit of militarism. We are not anxious to get into 
trouble, but if anybody thinks that the spirit of service 
and sacrifice is lost and that we have not the old 

1 From the speech delivered at Easthampton L. I., July 4, 1916. 

8 




Copyright by Brown Bros. 



Charles Evans Hughes 



THE MEANING OF AMERICANISM 9 

sentiment of self-respect, he doesn't understand the 
United States. 

We want patriotism, and I don't think that we are 
going to lose it very soon, although I do devoutly hope 
that out of the perils and difficulties of this time may 
come a new birth of the sentiment of unity. I do hope 
that in the midst of all these troublesome conditions we 
will have a better realization of our national strength 
and the import of our democratic institutions. 

The boy is going to thrill at the sight of the flag to-day 
just as he did fifty years or one hundred years ago. We 
are all going to thrill when we hear the words of our 
national hymn, and we think of the long years of struggle 
and determination that have brought us to this hour. 
But we want something more than thrills in our patri- 
otism; we want thought, we want intelligence. 

Not vast extent of territory, not great population, not 
simply extraordinary statistics of national wealth, al- 
though they speak in eloquent words of energy and 
managing ability ; but what we need more than anything 
else is an intelligent comprehension of the ideals of 
democracy. Those ideals are that every man shall have 
a fair and equal chance according to his talents. It is 
not an ideal of democracy that one alone shall emerge 
because of conspicuous ability, but that there shall be a 
great advance of the plain people of the country, upon 
whom the prosperity of the country depends. 

Wherever the Stars and Stripes float there is a shrine. 

It is all very well to talk about the Declaration of 
Independence and the strong sentiments it contains, 
but that was backed by men who couldn't have committed 
it to memory, men who couldn't have repeated it, but 



lo THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

men in whose lives was the incarnation of independence 
and whose spirit was breathed into that immortal docu- 
ment. 

It is because we had men who were willing to suffer, 
to die, to venture, to sacrifice, that we have a country, 
and it is only by that spirit that we will ever be able 
to keep a country. I love to think of those hardy men 
coming here with the same spirit that led the pioneers 
to the West and Farther West, the same spirit which in 
every part of our land has accounted for our development. 

Quiet men, not noisy men; sensible men, not foolish 
men; straight men, honest men, dependable men, real 
men — ^that is what we mean by Americanism. 

A THANKSGIVING 

MARION COUTHQUY SMITH 

Not for our harvest. 

Our fields' increase. 
Not for our safety. 

Our vaunted peace. 
Our word-clad justice. 

Our Hght-fiung gift. 
But for hearts that waken. 

For dreams that hf t — 
We praise Thee, O God 

For Belgitim's sword 

That faltered never, 
For the splendid woe 

Of her lost endeavour; 
For the great free peoples 



A THANKSGIVING 

In grim advance, 
For the might of England, 
The Hght of France — 
We praise Thee, O God! 

For Italy's flower 

Of fearless youth; 
For nations waking 

From dream to truth; 
For the flame of Serbia 

That mounts in death, 
The fire that fails not 

With blood and breath — 
We praise Thee, O God! 

For dull ease broken 

By sharpest dole. 
For the'dart that is driven 

Through flesh to soul ; 
For wrath made sterner 

By right's eclipse, 
For brave songs breaking 

From pain-wiung lips — 
We praise Thee, O God! 

For faith that is bom 
From^the burning nest. 

For the spirit's flight 

On its starward quest. 

For peace that dwells 
At the heart of strife, 

For death that scatters 
The seed of life — 

We praise Thee, O God! 



12 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

AMERICA^ 

BAYARD TAYLOR 

Foreseen in the vision of sages, 

Foretold when martyrs bled, 
She was bom of the longing of ages. 
By the truth of the noble dead 
And the faith of the living fed ! 
No blood in her lightest veins 
Frets at remembered chains, 
Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head. 
In her form and features still 
The unblenching Puritan will, 
Cavalier honor. Huguenot grace. 
The Quaker truth and sweetness, 
And the strength of the danger-girdled race 
Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness. 
From the homes of all, where her being began, 
She took what she gave to Man; 
Justice, that knew no station, 
Belief, as soul decreed. 
Free air for aspiration. 
Free force for independent deed ! 
She takes, but to give again, 
As the sea returns the rivers in rain ; 
And gathers the chosen of her seed 
From the hunted of every crown and creed. 
Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine; 
Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine ; 
Her France pursues some dream divine; 
Her Norway keeps his mountain pine ; 



1 From "The National Ode. 



AMERICA 13 

Her Italy waits by the western brine ; 

And broad-based under all, 
Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood, 
As rich in fortitude 
As e'er went worldward from the island-wall ! 

Fused in her candid light. 
To one strong race all races here unite : 
Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen 
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan: 

'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman: 
She makes it glory, now, to be a man ! 



AMERICA ENTERS THE WARi 

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 

I am the last man in the world, knowing for three years 
what our difficulties have been, what our anxieties have 
been, and what our fears have been — I am the last man 
in the world to say that the succor which is given from 
America is not in itself something to rejoice at, and to 
rejoice at greatly. But I also say that I value more the 
knowledge that America is going to win a right to be at 
the conference table when the terms of peace are discussed. 

That conference will settle the destiny of nations and 
the course of human life for God knows how many years. 
It would have been a tragedy, a tragedy for mankind, if 
America had not been there, and there with all her influ- 
ence and her power. 

I can see peace, not a peace to be a beginning of war, 
not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife 
and bloodshed, but a real peace. The world is an old 
world. You have never had the racking wars that have 
rolled like an ocean over Europe. 

Europe has always lived under the menace of the sword. 
When this war began, two thirds of Europe was under 
autocratic rule. Now it is the other way about, and 
democracy means peace. \ The democracy of France 
hesitated; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before 
it entered; the democracy of this country sprang back 
with a shudder and would never have entered that cal- 
dron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium; and if 



1 From a speech delivered before the American Luncheon Club of 
London, April 12, 191 7. 

14 




David Lloyd George 



AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR 15 

Prussia had been a democracy, there would have been 
no war. 

Many strange things have happened in this war, aye, 
and stranger things will come, and they are coming 
rapidly. There are times in history when this world 
spins so leisurely along its destined course that it seems 
for centuries to be at a standstill. There are awful times 
when it rushes along at giddying pace, covering the track 
of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living 
in now. 

To-day we are waging one of the most devastating wars 
that the world has ever seen. To-morrow, to-morrow, 
n9t perhaps distant to-morrows, war may be abolished 
forever from the category of human crimes. This may 
be something like that fierce outburst of winter which 
we now are witnessing before we complete the time for 
the summer. 

It is written of those gallant men who won that victory 
on Monday, from Canada, from Australia, and from this 
old country — it has proved that in spite of its age it is 
not decrepit — it is written of those gallant men that 
they attacked at dawn. Fitting work for the dawn — to 
drive out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants 
who had defiled her freedom. They attacked with the 
dawn. It is a significant phrase. 

The great nations represented in the struggle for free- 
dom — they are the heralds of dawn. They attacked 
with dawn, and those men are marching forward in the 
full radiance of that dawn, and will emerge into the full 
light of a perfect day. 



i6 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

ARMAGEDDON 

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD 

Marching down to Armageddon — 

Brothers, stout and strong! 
Let us cheer the way we tread on 

With a soldiers' song! 
Faint we by the weary road, 

Or fall we in the rout. 
Dirge or Paean, Death or Triumph ! — 

Let the song ring out ! 

We are they who scorn the scomers — 

Love the lovers — hate 
None within the world's four corners — 

All must share one fate ; 
We are they whose common banner 

Bears no badge or sign, 
Save the Light which dyes it white — 

The Hope that makes it shine. 

We are they whose bugle rings, 

That all the wars may cease ; 
We are they will pay the Kings 

Their cruel price for Peace ; 
We are they whose steadfast watchword 

Is what Christ did teach, — 
"Each man for his Brother first — 

And Heaven, then, for each." 

We are they who will not falter — 

Many swords or few — 
Till we make this Earth the altar 



ARMAGEDDON 17 

Of a worship new; 
We are they who will not take 

From palace, priest, or code, 
A meaner Law than "Brotherhood" — 

A lower Lord than God. 

Marching down to Armageddon — 

Brothers, stout and strong ! . 
Ask not why the way we tread on 

Is so rough and long ! 
God will tell us when our spirits 

Grow to grasp His plan ! 
Let us do our part to-day — 

And help Him, helping Man ! 

Shall we even curse the madness, 

Which for ''ends of State" 
Dooms us to the long, long sadness 

Of this human hate? 
Let us slay in perfect pity 

Those that must not live; 
Vanquish, and forgive our foes — 

Or fall — and still forgive! 

We are those whose unpaid legions, 

In free ranks arrayed, 
Massacred in many regions — 

Never once were stayed : 
We are they whose torn battalions, 

Trained to bleed, not fly. 
Make our agonies a triumph, — 

Conquer, while we die ! 



THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Therefore, down to Armageddon — 

Brothers, bold and strong — 
Cheer the glorious way we tread on 

With this soldier's song! 
Let the armies of the old Flags 

March in silent dread ! 
Death and Life are one to us, 

Who fight for Quick and Dead! 



WHAT DID YOU SEE OUT THERE, MY LAD? 

JOHN OXENHAM 

What did you see out there, my lad, 
That has set that look in your eyes? 

You went out a boy, you have come back a man. 

With strange new depths underneath your tan; 

What was it you saw out there, my lad. 
That set such deeps in your eyes? 

"Strange things — and sad — and wonderful — 

Things that I scarce can tell — 
I have been in the sweep of the Reaper's scythe— 

With God— and Christ — and hell. 

"I have seen Christ doing Christly deeds; 

I have seen the Devil at play; 
I have grimped to the sod in the hand of God ; 

I have seen the Godless pray. 

"I have seen Death blast out suddenly 
From a clear blue summer sky; 



WHAT DID YOU SEE OUT THERE, MY LAD? 19 

I have slain like Cain with a blazing brain, 
I have heard the wounded cry. 

" I have lain among the dead, 

With no hope but to die; 
I have seen them killing the wounded ones, 

I have seen them crucify. 

"I have seen the Devil in petticoats 

Wiling the souls of men ; 
I have seen great sinners do great deeds, 

And turn to their sins again. 

"I have sped through hells of fiery hail. 

With fell red-fury shod ; 
I have heard the whisper of a voice, 

I have looked in the face of God." 

You've a right to your deep, high look, my lad, 

You have met God in the ways ; 

And no man looks into His face 

But he feels it all his days. 

You've a right to your deep, high look, my lad, 

And we thank Him for His grace. 



AMERICA FIRST 1 

WOODROW WILSON 

There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories 
of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution 
was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid 
upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the 
things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. 
For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in 
America is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active 
principle of conduct. It is something that was bom into 
the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is some- 
thing that was bom into the world to replace systems that 
had preceded it and to bring men out upon a new plane 
of privilege. The glory of the men whose memories 
you honor and perpetuate is that they saw this vision, 
and it was a vision of the future. It was a vision of great 
days to come when a little handful of three million people 
upon the borders of a single sea should have become a 
great multitude of free men and women spreading across 
a great continent, dominating the shores of two oceans, 
and sending West as well as East the influences of indi- 
vidual freedom. These things were consciously in their 
minds as they framed the great government which was 
born out of the American Revolution; and every time we 
gather to perpetuate their memories it is incumbent upon 
us that we should be worthy of recalling them and that 
we should endeavor by every means in our power to 
emulate their example. 

1 From a speech delivered at Washington, D. C, before the Daughters 
of the American Revolution, October ii, 191 5- 

20 



AMERICA FIRST 21 

The American Revolution was the birth of a nation; 
it was the creation of a great free repubhc based upon 
traditions of personal liberty which theretofore had 
been confined to a single little island, but which it was 
purposed should spread to all mankind. And the singular 
fascination of American history is that it has been a 
process of constant re-creation, of making over again in 
each generation the thing which was conceived at first. 
You know how peculiarly necessary that has been in our 
case, because America has not grown by the mere multi- 
plication of the original stock. It is easy to preserve 
tradition with continuity of blood; it is easy in a single 
family to remember the origins of the race and the pur- 
poses of its organization; but it is not so easy when that 
race is constantly being renewed and augmented from 
other sources, from stocks that did not carry or originate 
the same principles. 

So from generation to generation strangers have had to 
be indoctrinated with the principles of the American 
family, and the wonder and the beauty of it all has been 
that the infection has been so generously easy. For the 
principles of liberty are united with the principles of hope. 
Every individual, as well as every nation, wishes to 
realize the best thing that is in him, the best thing that 
can be conceived out of the materials of which his spirit 
is constructed. It has happened in away that fascinates 
the imagination that we have not only been augmented 
by additions from outside, but that we have been greatly 
stimulated by those additions. Living in the easy pros- 
perity of a free people, knowing that the sun had always 
been free to shine upon us and prosper our undertakings, 
we did not realize how hard the task of liberty is and how 



22 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

rare the privilege of liberty is; but men were drawn out 
of every climate and out of every race because of an irre- 
sistible attraction of their spirits to the American ideal. 
They thought of America as lifting, like that great statue 
in the harbor of New York, a torch to light the pathway of 
men to the things that they desire, and men of all sorts 
and conditions struggled toward that light and came to 
our shores with an eager desire to realize it, and a hunger 
for it such as some of us no longer felt, for we were as if 
satiated and satisfied and were indulging ourselves 
after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic devotion 
of the early devotees of those great principles. Strangers 
came to remind us of what we had promised ourselves 
and through ourselves had promised mankind. All men 
came to us and said, ''Where is the bread of life with which 
you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it 
yourselves?" For my part, I believe that the constant 
renewal of this people out of foreign stocks has been a 
constant source of reminder to this people of what the 
inducement was that was offered to men who would come 
and be of our number. 

Now we have come to a time of special stress and test. 
There never was a time when we needed more clearly to 
conserve the principles of our own patriotism than this 
present time. Every political action, every social action, 
should have for its object in America at this time to chal- 
lenge the spirit of America; to ask that every man and 
woman who thinks first of America should rally to the 
standards of our life. 

America has a great cause which is not confined to 
the American continent. It is the cause of humanity 
itself. I do not mean in anything that I say even to imply 



AMERICA FIRST 23 

a judgment upon any nation or upon any policy, for my 
object here this afternoon is not to sit in judgment upon 
anybody but ourselves and to challenge you to assist all 
of us who are trying to make America more than ever 
conscious of her own principles and her own duty. I look 
forward to the necessity in every political agitation in the 
years which are immediately at hand of calHng upon every 
man to declare himself, where he stands. Is it America 
first or is it not? 

We ought to be very careful about some of the impres- 
sions that we are forming just now. There is too general 
an impression, I fear, that very large numbers of our 
fellow-citizens born in other lands have not entertained 
with sufficient intensity and affection the American ideal. 
But the number of such is, I am sure, not large. Those 
who would seek to represent them are very vocal, but 
they are not very influential. Some of the best stuff of 
America has come out of foreign lands, and some of the 
best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized 
citizens of the United States. I would not be afraid upon 
the test of "America first" to take a census of all the 
foreign-bom citizens of the United States, for I know 
that the vast majority of them came here because they 
believed in America; and their belief in America has 
made them better citizens. They can say that they have 
bought this privilege with a great price. They have left 
their homes, they have left their kindred, they have 
broken all the nearest and dearest ties of human life in 
order to come to a new land, take a new rootage, begin 
a new life, and so by self-sacrifice express their confidence 
in a new principle; whereas, it cost us none of these things. 
We were born into this privilege; we were rocked and 



24 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

cradled in it; we did nothing to create it; and it is, there- 
fore, the greater duty on our part to do a great deal to 
enhance it and preserve it. I am not deceived as to the 
balance of opinion among the foreign-born citizens of the 
United States, but I am in a hurry for an opportunity 
to have a line-up and let the men who are thinking first 
of other countries stand on one side and all those that 
are for America first, last, and all the time stand on the 
other side. 

Now, you can do a great deal in this direction. When 
I was a college officer I used to be very much opposed to 
hazing; not because hazing is not wholesome, but because 
sophomores are poor judges. I remember a very dear 
friend of mine, a professor of ethics on the other side of 
the water, was asked if he thought it was ever justifiable 
to tell a lie. He said Yes, he thought it was sometimes 
justifiable to lie; *'but," he said, *'it is so difficult to judge 
of the justification that I usually tell the truth." I think 
that ought to be the motto of the sophomore. There are 
freshmen who need to be hazed, but the need is to be 
judged by such nice tests that a sophomore is hardly old 
enough to determine them. But the world can determine 
them. We are not freshmen at college, but we are con- 
stantly hazed. I would a great deal rather be obliged to 
draw pepper up my nose than to observe the hostile glances 
of my neighbors. I would a great deal rather be beaten 
than ostracized. I would a great deal rather endure any 
sort of physical hardship if I might have the affection of 
my fellow-men. We constantly discipline our fellow- 
citizens by having an opinion about them. That is the 
sort of discipline we ought now to administer to everybody 
who is not to the very core of his heart an American. 



AMERICA FIRST 25 

Just have an opinion about him and let him experience 
the atmospheric effects of that opinion! 

It has seemed to me that my privilege this afternoon 
was not merely a privilege of courtesy, but the real privi- 
lege of reminding you — for I am sure I am doing nothing 
more — of the great principles which we stand associated 
to promote. I for my part rejoice that we belong to a 
country in which the whole business of government is so 
difficult. We do not take orders from anybody; it is a 
universal communication of conviction, the most subtle, 
delicate, and difficult of processes. There is not a single 
individual's opinion that is not of some consequence in 
making up the grand total, and to be in this great coop- 
erative effort is the most stimulating thing in the world. 
A man standing alone may well doubt his own judg- 
ment. He may mistrust his own intellectual processes ; he 
may even wonder if his own heart leads him right in mat- 
ters of public conduct; but if he finds his heart part of 
the great throb of national Hfe, there can be no doubt 
about it. If that is his circumstance, then he may know 
that he is part of one of the great forces of the world. 

I would not feel any exhilaration in belonging to America 
if I did not feel that she was something more than a rich 
and powerful nation. I should not feel proud to be in 
some respects and for a little while her spokesman if I 
did not believe that there was something else than physical 
force behind her. I believe that the glory of America 
is that she is a great spiritual conception and that in the 
spirit of her institutions dwells not only her distinction 
but her power. The one thing that the world cannot 
permanently resist is the moral force of great and triimi- 
phant convictions. 



26 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

THE NEW BANNER 

KATRINA TRASK 

O fellow-citizens of storm-tossed Lands, 

War weary ! Sound the bugle-note ! Arise ! 

New steadfast standards wait your eager hands, 

The Star of Promise orbs to meet your eyes. 

Great Kings must pass, that mankind may be free, 
Beneath the banner of Democracy! 
The Mighty Ruler of this mortal life 

Has wisdom, not by mortals understood : 

The seeds of blood, the deeds of wanton strife 

Shall some day harvest unexpected good. 

Great Kings shall pass and every nation be 
Ruled by the people — for the people, free. 
When the mad anguish of this stricken world — 

Where valiant heroes daily fight and fall — 
Has passed and Freedom's banners are tmfurled, 
Then shall we know the reason for it all ! 

Then every waiting, heart-sick land shall see 
The ultimate design of Destiny ! 
Brave men and women, laboring in toil — 

Who, faithful, fight with willing sword or pen, 
Who work to break the rock or till the soil — 
Shall wear the high insignia of men. 

All Kings must pass, that every man may be 
A monarch in his manhood, strong and free ! 
Beyond the present, unimagined woe, 

A glorious Day is breaking o'er the earth: 
As Spring flowers blossom, after ice-bound snow, 
The God of Gods shall bring new things to birth. 
It is the dawn ! Great forces are set free ! 
All Hail the Day ! World-wide Democracy ! 



A LITANY IN THE DESERT 27 

A LITANY IN THE DESERT 

ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON 



On the other side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains 
there is a great welter of steel and flame. I have read 
that it is so. I know nothing of it here. 

On the other side of the water there is terrible carnage. 
I have read that it is so. I know nothing of it here. 

I do not know why men fight and die. I do not know 
why men sweat and slave. I know nothing of it here. 

II 

Out of the peace of your great valleys, America, out 
of the depth and silence of your deep canyons. 

Out of the wide stretch of yellow corn-fields, out of the 
stealthy sweep of your rich prairies. 

Out of the high mountain peaks, out of the intense 
purity of your snows, 

Invigorate us, O America. 

Out of the deep peace of your breast, out of the sure 
strength of your loins, 

Recreate us, O America. 

Not from the smoke and the fever and fret, not from 
the welter of furnaces, from the fierce melting-pots of 
cities ; 

But from the quiet fields, from the little places, from 
the dark lamp-lit nights — from the plains, from the 
cabins, from the little house in the mountains, 

Breathe strength upon us : 

And give us the young men who will make us great. 



VICTORY BEFORE PEACE 

ALBERT SHAW 

The United States has joined a powerful league of 
nations whose object is to enforce peace. It is reasonable 
to hope that the end of the war is nearer in consequence. 
Whether or not the existing war is to be shortened by our 
assiimption of the status of belligerency, it is fairly certain 
that our own future peace as well as that of all other 
leading nations, for a hundred years to come, is much 
less likely to be disturbed. We have gone into this war 
to make the rule of reason respected, and to make the 
peace dream of ages a working reality of the early future. 

If a peace could have been made last winter it was con- 
ceivable that the main ends of justice might have been 
met and durable solutions adopted. But the continuance 
and development of the war has made it necessary that 
victory should precede peace. The cause of the Anglo- 
French group of allies has become clarified in the move- 
ment of events, until now that cause is identical with the 
best interests of mankind. America had hoped to join 
a future league to enforce peace after war was ended. 
But events have shown that we could expect no such 
League of the Future, unless we were prepared to play a 
larger part in the League of the Present. 

When great crises arise and decisions of historic moment 
are made, it is usually true that there has been a long 
series of historic events and situations more or less obscure 
leading inevitably to the startling climax. No nation 
in Europe desired in 19 14 to become involved in war. 
Yet the fuel had been piling up for the great conflagration 

28 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Albert Shaw 



VICTORY BEFORE PEACE 29 

for many years; and it was written in the book of fate 
that a torch should be appHed in the Balkans that would 
set the whole world aflame. 

We in the United States, looking on at these develop- 
ments, were conscious of great fears and also of great 
hopes. There was room in the world for the industry 
and commerce of Germany, as well as for the efforts of 
England, France, and Japan. There was valuable and 
beneficent progress visible in all the leading countries. 
There was growing friendship across boundary lines among 
men of business, men of science, representatives of the 
labor movements, and exponents of arts and letters. It 
was ridiculous to say that the piursuits of peace had made 
the nations effeminate, or lacking in the so-called martial 
virtues. On the contrary, the disciplines of modern 
Hfe, along with the applications of science, had given us a 
larger proportion of people sound in mind and body than 
at any other time in human history. Yet with all the 
fine progress of nations, the secret diplomacy of their 
dynasties and their foreign offices and the competitive 
extension of their political empires were in constant 
danger of bringing about either a succession of wars or 
one stupendous conflict. Over against the fears of war 
due to false policies, were the hopes based upon the grow- 
ing common sense of mankind, upon steps taken in the 
Hague Conferences, upon arbitration treaties, and espe- 
cially upon the constant growth of democratic influence 
and labor solidarity. 

When the great war broke out, in 1914, w^e declared that 
it was fundamentally due to the fact that peoples were 
the victims of governments. We took the ground that 
if Germany had been as progressive in the creation of a 



30 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

truly representative government as she had been progres- 
sive in many other aspects of her national life and char- 
acter, the war could not have occurred. 

It is very annoying to the government-controlled press 
of Germany that President Wilson should have had the 
audacity in his address to Congress to make a sharp dis- 
tinction between the German people and the Prussian 
autocracy- that now constitutes the government of the 
Empire. Yet this distinction is not merely invidious or 
theoretical. According to President Wilson, one of our 
objects in taking part in the war against the German 
Government is to secure the emancipation and true 
welfare of the German people. His address to Congress 
breathes no spirit of hatred. Having failed in his efforts 
a few months earlier to persuade the nations of Europe 
to negotiate a "peace without victory," it became evident 
to him that the war must go on until one side or the 
other had gained a marked degree of military success. 

Thus the moral effect of having America committed 
to the common cause could hardly be overestimated. 

— From The Review of Reviews, May, 191 7 



AMERICANS, HAIL! 

SIR WILLIAM WATSON 

Here, too, is greatness; here are heads grown gray 

In council, not yet dreaming of repose; 

Here are the athletes of debate, and here 

The brains that are the lamps without whose light 

Armies would grope and stumble, and noblest prowess 

With a waste splendor dazzle a fruitless field. 



AMERICANS, HAIL! 31 

Here, also, his hot thirst for toil unslaked, 
The sinews of his lithe mind unrelaxed, 
Is he, our Empire's leader: he who set 
The wheels of the machinery of victory 
Whirring and spinning throughout all this isle, 
Till Britain himimed as one great mill of war; 
A man, no wraith or shadow; a live man, 
Loathed by the specters and the counterfeits; 
A man as himian as your Lincoln was. 
Not muffled up in formula and phrase. 
With palisaded spirit, but giving us 
Access and entrance to his hopes and fears, 
And in companionship of glorious hazard 
Bearing us with him, while he treads a road 
Built like a causeway across flaming Hell; 
Himself a flame of ardor and resolve. 
Beset by all the tempests, but unquenched, 
Being used to blasts, and native to the storm, 
And thriving on the thunder from his prime. 

Ours were the shame, if having such a leader 
We proved unworthy at last to be so led. 
And lowered the flag of an unshaken will. 
And stooped our soul to a stature and a posture 
Like theirs who preach a base truck with the foe. 
* * * * * 

With hope that can not wholly vanquish fear, 
The veiled, unknown, tremendous morrow; we 
With our own chiefs of camp and council; you 
With yours; and at your head the famed, the trusted, 
The hated and revered one : he whose speech 
Is hazeless sister unto cloudless thought : 



32 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Who, flooding with a bland light all his theme, 

Can, when the hour craves gallant archery, 

Unquiver none the less a deadly lightning : 

A mind 'twixt wariness and boldness poised. 

Wide- watching and far-scouting, subtle and sage; 

Cool as a pine at its firm heart is cool, 

Tho secretly a colleague of the sun, 

And living by his fire : a soul erect 

E'en as the pine itself is; and altho 

Towering amid the forest of your life 

O'er all beside, still of that forest, still 

One only of a hundred million trees 

Knowing no difference in their right to Summer. 

Ah, once, in the dead yesterday that seems 
Entombed so deep, haply we did him wrong! 
We knew not all ; now, now we understand. 
We are men, and see the man: large, patient, calm; 
Freed from the trammels and the coils that bound 
And half obscured him : standing there to-day, 
Etched with no vagueness against no blurred sky: 
Yonder concerting and controlling all 
The instruments in that vast orchestra. 
Your nation, whence there rises goldenly 
Tho sternly, with far surge and tidal swell. 
Not without sad and wailful underflow, 
But mighty in heave and sound, all dissonance hushed. 
That new Heroic Symphony of war; 
Heard throughout Earth with a grave thankfulness 
By such as love great music; and perhaps 
E'en on an ear divine not wholly lost. 
Not utterly unacceptable to Heaven. 



COMRADES 33 



COMRADES 

RICHARD HOVEY 

Comrades, gird your swords to-night, 

For the battle is with dawn ! 

Oh, the clash of shields together, 

With the triumph coming on ! 

Greet the foe. 

And lay him low, 

When strong men fight together ! 

Comrades, watch the tides'to-night, 

For the sailing is with dawn ! 

Oh, to face the spray together, 

With the tempest coming on ! 

Greet the sea 

With a shout of glee, 

When strong men roam together ! 

Comrades, give a cheer to-night. 

For the dying is with dawn ! 

Oh, to meet the stars together. 

With the silence coming on ! 

Greet the end 

As a friend a friend. 

When strong men die together! 

— From Songs from Vagabondia 



WHY WE MUST WIN 

FRANK O. LOWDEN 

This is not a mere war for territory. If it were, some 
point of common agreement might be reached. It is not 
a war sought as a balm to a Nation's wounded pride. 
If it were, that pride would have been swallowed up long 
ago in the horrors of the war. It is a war of ideas. And 
it is a war of two such big ideas that the world itself is 
not big enough to hold them both. One idea recognizes 
that, as Government is composed of the people, so Govern- 
ment is subject to the same moral tests, the same ethical 
obligations as the people who compose it. The idea for 
which the Central Empires contend is that the State is 
above all morality, all obligation to humanity, and that 
its only consideration is, what is best for itself. 

At last we know the issue which we have to meet. The 
Prussian autocracy, a half century ago, declared that the 
law of force was the only law governing nations. The 
world heard, but did not heed the sinister threat. Now 
we know that this was no mere idle, academic utterance 
of the class-room. The idea, inspired by the history of 
the HohenzoUems and given utterance by the State- 
controlled universities of the Empire, has flourished until 
it holds securely within its grip a great and powerful 
nation. Moved by this idea Germany has, with infinite 
patience, and ingenuity, and genius, built the greatest 
fighting machine the world has ever known. 

That idea has grown until it has almost the force of a 
religious cult. It is spreading like a black cloud over the 
earth, and nothing will drive away that cloud but the 

34 




Frank 0. Lowden 



WHY WE MUST WIN 35 

absolute triiimph of our armies in this war. I believe 
from the bottom of my heart that the German people will 
gain more from their own decisive defeat than we will gain 
ourselves. We are at war, not with any people, but 
with this idea which, if we do not fight it to the death, will 
dominate and rule and ruin the earth. Why should not 
they invade Belgium ? It was to their military advantage, 
and in their new philosophy, advantage to the State is 
all that counts. Why isn't a treaty a scrap of paper, 
if their philosophy is sound? Why should not they sink 
unarmed merchant ships and deliberately drown men and 
women and children, if that would help them to impose 
their new Kultur upon the world? Why should we be 
surprised at their dropping bombs upon hospitals where 
wounded and dying men lie? These men had dared to 
fight for that other idea, the outworn idea that there is 
such a thing as the honor of nations. The German war 
cult has been consistent — diabolically consistent — 
throughout. It can answer every charge that has been 
made or may be made against it by an appeal to its 
basic idea that the nation is above the moral law — that 
national honor is but a phrase invented by the weaker 
nations to escape the power of the sword. Force, brute 
force, material force, force that can be seen and felt, and 
force alone, if they are right, should rule the world. 
Literature, music, the arts, and all the things of the 
spirit that make life sweet and beautiful are of use only 
if they prepare the people for war, and then, when war 
comes, serve to feed its flames. 

The idea that moral considerations, considerations of 
justice, of himianity, of honor, bind the individuals of a 
State but not the State itself, is so monstrous that it 



36 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

threatens the civilization of the world. Yea, it will 
destroy even the civilization of the State itself, which 
holds to this idea. It corrupts its own citizens. The 
people of no country can have high ideals if their nation 
openly professes low ones. The conduct of Count von 
Bemstorff, the late German ambassador to this country, 
is a case in point. He followed faithfully the German 
idea. He was the honored guest of our Nation; the 
hospitality of our people and the freedom of our land were 
his. Professing daily his friendship for America, and 
though we were at peace with his country, he plotted 
destruction of railroads and munition plants, he fomented 
internal disorder, he filled our land with spies — but he 
was true to the principles of his master. And no man 
can serve a state which denies the existence of national 
honor, and not himself lose his own honor. Count von 
Bernstorff doubtless despised himself for the life of lies 
he lived amongst us. But he was loyal to the teachings 
of his country. When will men learn that there cannot 
be one set of ethics for men and another for nations? 
The idea that a nation can do no wrong, and that the 
moral considerations which bind individuals do not con- 
trol in the activities of the State, must be stamped out 
for evermore if peace in any permanent form is ever to 
return to the world. Whatever is wrong when done by 
the individuals composing a nation, is equally wrong 
when done by the nation itself. The idea that it is a 
crime for one man to steal his neighbor's horse, but an 
heroic thing when seventy-five million, in the name of 
the State, steal a neighboring province, must be done to 
death. You cannot multiply vice by a number large 
enough to make vice a virtue. 



WHY WE MUST WIN 37 

Under the spell of this evil ideal they have forgotten 
all the splendid literature of their past; they have neg- 
lected the noble lines of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, 
and have decorated that poet who has written "The 
Hymn of Hate." This ideal has seized their Science, 
and their scientists tell you to-day that they are but 
acting in accordance with the law of the survival of the 
fittest — that it is best for the world that weak nations 
and weak peoples be exterminated. That is the idea with 
which we are at war. 

Oh, my friends, this idea which'^they let loose half a 
century ago, if it shall go on another half century will 
take the world back to the law of the jungle, and that 
cruel law will hold the world in its grip. 

It is so hard to realize that such a danger can exist at 
this period of the world. Upon the whole we have made 
progress during the century and a half since we, as a 
nation, came into existence, and we assume that it must 
continue indefinitely; but that is not the history of the 
world. You will recall that away back, even before the 
time of the Christian Era, there was a splendid civilization 
in Greece, and that the Roman Republic had started upon 
its career of glory; but remember that all this civilization 
went out into the blackness of night and for centuries, 
in the Middle Ages, a sable pall covered the globe. Civili- 
zation has been beaten before, and it has taken centuries 
for it to emerge, and so again, with this threat, like a 
black cloud over every land, there never was so heavy 
a burden placed upon our patriotism as now — never in 
all our past. 

This is not like any other war in which we were ever 
engaged. We had our great Civil War, the greatest war 



38 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

in the history of the world down to that time. But the 
present war means infinitely more to everyone of us than 
did the Civil War, and I will tell you why. If we, of the 
North, had lost in the Civil War, we still would have had 
some kind of a country. It would have been fragmentary 
and inglorious, perhaps, but we still would have had a 
home. There would have been some soil, above which 
our flag waved, and upon which we could dwell. But 
if this war in which we are engaged is lost, we will not even 
have the remnant of a country left, because the principle 
of absolutism will rest upon all the world. We not only 
will have no place which we can call our home, but there 
won't be a nook or a cranny in all the universe, where a 
lover of liberty can find refuge; because when this war is 
over, the world, all the world, will be altogether free, 
or altogether slave. 

I do not know which is the more interested in this war, 
capital or labor, but I do know that nothing matters to 
either if we do not win the war. And capital cannot 
alone win the war, and labor cannot alone win the war. 
Therefore, it is time, as it never was before, for capital 
and labor to get together, to gather about the same 
board, to sit in the same council, and to resolve to merge 
all differences until their common danger shall be repelled. 

America has been called the melting-pot of the nations. 
There are some evidences of late that the pot has grown 
cool and that it has failed in its work. Maybe the flames 
of this world-wide war were needed to make it red hot 
again. At any rate, we may hope that when the war is 
over there will come from that pot, only gold and dross, 
nd that our citizenship, whether native or foreign born 
will stand forth in but two classes, — genuine, war- tried 
Americans on the one hand, and dross on the other. 



I AM AN AMERICAN 39 

I AM AN AMERICAN 

ELIAS LIEBERMAN 

I am an American. 

My father belongs to the Sons of the Revolution; 

My mother, to the Colonial Dames. 

One of my ancestors pitched tea overboard in Boston 

Harbor ; 
Another stood his ground with Warren ; 
Another hungered with Washington at Valley Forge. 
My forefathers were America in the making : 
They spoke in her council halls ; 
They died on her battle-fields ; 
They commanded her ships ; 
They cleared her forests. 
Dawns reddened and paled. 

Stanch hearts of mine beat fast at each new star 
In the nation's flag. 

Keen eyes of mine foresaw her greater glory : 
The sweep of her seas, 
The plenty of her plains, 
The man-hives in her billion- wired cities. 
Every drop of blood in me holds a heritage of patriotism. 
I am proud of my past. 
I am an American. 

I am an American. 

My father was an atom of dust, 

My mother a straw in the wind, 

To his serene majesty. 

One of my ancestors died in the mines of Siberia; 

Another was crippled for life by twenty blows of the knut; 



40 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Another was killed defending his home during the 

massacres. 
The history of my ancestors is a trail of blood 
To the palace-gate of the Great White Czar. 
But then the dream came — 
The dream of America. 
In the light of the Liberty torch 
The atom of dust became a man 
And the straw in the wind became a woman 
For the first time. 
"See," said my father, pointing to the flag that fluttered 

near, 
"That flag of stars and stripes is yours; 
It is the emblem of the promised land. 
It means, my son, the hope of humanity. 
Live for it — die for it ! " 

Under the open sky of my new country I swore to do so ; 
And every drop of blood in me will keep that vow. 
I am proud of my future. 
I am an American. 

THE SEARCHLIGHTS 

ALFRED NOYES 

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight, 
The lean black cruisers search the sea. 

Night-long their level shafts of light 
Revolve, and find no enemy. 

Only they know each leaping wave 

May hide the lightning, and their grave. 

And in the land they guard so well 
Is there no silent watch to keep ? 



THE SEARCHLIGHTS 41 

An age is dying, and the bell 

Rings midnight on a vaster deep. 
But over all its waves, once more. 
The searchlights move, from shore to shore. 

And captains that we thought were dead, 
And dreamers that we thought were dumb, 

And voices that we thought were fled, 
Arise, and call us, and we come; 

And "Search in thine own soul," they cry; 

"For there, too, lurks thine enemy." 

Search for the foe in thine own soul, 

The sloth, the intellectual pride. 
The trivial jest that veils the goal 

For which our fathers lived and died: 
The lawless dreams, the cynic Art, 
That rend thy nobler self apart. 

Not far, not far into the night 

These level swords of light can pierce; 

Yet for her faith does England fight, 
Her faith in this our universe, 

Believing Truth and Justice draw 

From founts of everlasting law; 

Therefore a Power above the State, 

The unconquerable Power returns. 
The fire, the fire that made her great 

Once more upon her altar burns. 
Once more, redeemed and healed and whole, 
She moves to the Eternal Goal. 

ThivS poem was called forth by General von Bernharde's statement 
that "Political morality differs from individual morality because there 
is no power above the State." 



THE UNITED STATES COMES OF AGE 

HAMILTON HOLT 

The United States has come of age. For nearly a 
century and a half it has been growing up. It passed 
safely through the common ailments of childhood. It 
has suffered the disconcerting mysteries of adolescence. 
It has been racked by "growing pains." An almost mor- 
tal illness, safely weathered, left it stronger than before. 
It has put on bone and sinew and good solid flesh. It 
has grown in wisdom and stature. 

Now, in God's good time, it has come to its majority. 
It has stepped out to take its place among its fellows on 
the earth. It has become a citizen of the world. 

This is the deep and stirring significance of the Presi- 
dent's address. The United States at a stroke assumes 
the role of a Great Power. It steps out of the Western 
Hemisphere into the world. It accepts its full share of 
responsibility for the world's peace and good order. It 
declares its right and duty and purpose to fight for justice, 
not only in the New World, but in the Old. 

All this was implied in what we have already done. 
But it needed such a detailed and unequivocal statement 
to drive it home. Events have moved rapidly for us in 
the past year. It is no wonder that Europe has not 
realized how far we had come. It is no wonder that we 
ourselves were hardly conscious where we had arrived. 

We are pledged to fight to the end to readjust the map 
of Europe. Our terms of peace include a free Poland, 
a return of Italia Irredenta, the freedom of Turkey's 
oppressed peoples, the redress of the crime of 187 1 in 
Alsace-Lorraine, autonomy for parts of Austria-Hungary. 

42 




Hamilton Holt 



TO AMERICA 43 

A strange undertaking for the American people. An 
astounding breaking with the past. But in the world 
we have lived in for three years now it hardly seems 
strange. The past is more shadowy than it has ever 
been before. Our eyes are on the future. 

The future beckons the American nation to a mighty 
responsibility. The nation goes forward with a bound. 
— From The Independent, January 19, 191 8. 

TO AMERICA 

CHARLES LANGBRIDGE MORGAN 

When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent 
Close wings about the room, and winter stands 
Hard-eyed before the window, when the hands 
Have turned the book's last page and friends are sleeping, 
Thought, as it were an old stringed instnmient 
Drawn to remembered music, oft does set 
The lips moving in prayer, for us fresh keeping 
Knowledge of springtime and the violet. 

And, as the eyes grow dim with many years. 
The spirit runs more swiftly than the feet, 
Perceives its comfort, knows that it will meet 
God at the end of troubles, that the dreary 
Last reaches of old age lead beyond tears 
To happy youth unending. There is peace 
In homeward waters, where at last the weary 
Shall find rebirth, and their long struggle cease. 

So, at this hour, when the Old World lies sick, 
Beyond the pain, the agony of breath 



44 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Hard drawn, beyond the menaces of death, 
O'er graves and years leans out the eager spirit. 
First must the ancient die; then shall be quick 
New fires within us. Brother, we shall make 
Incredible discoveries and inherit 
The fruits of hope, and love shall be awake. 



THE REVEILLE 

BRET HARTE 

Hark ! I hear the tramp of thousands, 

And of armed men the hum; 
Lo ! a nation's hosts have gathered 
Round the quick alarming drum, — 
Saying, "Come, 
Freemen, come! 
Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming 
drum. 

"Let me of my heart take counsel: 

War is not of life the sum. 
Who shall stay and reap the harvest 
V/hen the auttimn days shall come?" 
But the drum 
Echoed, "Come! 
Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn- 
sounding drum. 

"But when won the coming battle. 

What of profit springs therefrom? 
What if conquest, subjugation, 

Even greater ills become?" 



THE REVEILLE 45 

But the drum 
Answered, "Come! 
You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee 
answering drum. 

"What if, 'mid the cannon's thunder, ^ 

Whistling shot and bursting bomb, 
When my brothers fall around me. 

Should my heart grow cold and numb?" 
But the drum 
-Answered, "Come! 
Better there in death united, than in life a recreant, — 
Come!" 

Thus they answered, — hoping, fearing, 

Some in faith, and doubting some. 
Till a trumpet-voice, proclaiming. 
Said, "My chosen people, come!" 
Then the drum, 
Lo! was dumb, 
For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, 
"Lord, we come!" 



OPPOSING PRINCIPLES! 

TALCOTT WILLIAMS 

We may as well understand that what we have long 
looked for, which through earth's mists men have seen as 
the coming of the dawn, the World State, is already here. 

There is not a man in business who has not found him- 
self affected by what has taken place. There is not a 
single man here or a single man between the oceans, who 
is not perfectly well aware that in a fashion he had never 
dreamed, in a manner he had never imagined, and which 
no statesman had predicted and no university had taught, 
there has suddenly dawned upon us all, that humanity 
is one, that all states are part of it, that we have ceased to 
look upon peoples, but instead we see humanity as a whole, 
and that every great act affects all himianity alike. Face 
to face with the World State, we need to be aware that 
what we are watching is not a war between nations any 
longer. It is civil war. It is a war between two great 
opposing principles of humanity; one looking to the 
organization of the State from above, and the other look- 
ing to its organization from below. One believing that 
authority can be conferred upon a few to exercise for the 
benefit of the many, and the other believing that nobody 
is wise enough to exercise authority in behalf of anyone 
else except by their choice and their consent. 

It will be seven centuries next June since the corner- 
stone of the second of those principles was laid in the 
Great Charter signed by the barons and King John. 



1 Delivered before the Economic Club of Boston, February 8, 1915. 

46 




Talcott Williams 



BOSTON HYMN 47 

The great question is whether this principle shall widen, 
until it is recognized by all the world. 

We cannot avoid it if we would, and we would not avoid 
it if we could. The great service which the United States 
can do towards obtaining peace is to continue to stand 
upon the protest which it uttered against the violation of 
the neutralization of one country until it has secured the 
acceptance, in the reorganization of the World State which 
is at hand, of this principle by the entire world. 

This is the task which is before this country; this is the 
task which is slowly establishing itself before you; and 
there is not a single man here who does not believe that 
upon this principle and upon this principle alone the 
United States should endeavor to secure peace. Peace, 
when it comes, must begin a World State ruled either by 
militarism or by Republics; and in that great conflict, 
although victory may be delayed, although sacrifice may 
be required, here, in this city, with Concord and Bunker 
Hill at hand, no man can doubt as to the final and 
ultimate result. 

BOSTON HYMN 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

The word of the Lord by night 
To the watching Pilgrims came. 
As they sat by the seaside. 
And filled their hearts with flame. 

God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more ; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 



48 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Think ye I made this ball 

A field of havoc and war, 

Where tyrants great and tyrants small 

Might harry the weak and poor? 

My angel — his name is Freedom — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west, 
And fend you with his wing. 



DIES IRAE— DIES PACIS 

JOHN OXENHAM 

''Only through Me!" . . . The clean, high call comes 

pealing, 
Above the thunders of the battle-plain ; — 
"Only through Me can Life's red wounds find healing; 
Only through Me shall earth find peace again. 

Only through Me . . . Love's Might, all might tran- 
scending, 
Alone can drain the poison-fangs of Hate. 
Yours the beginning! — Mine a nobler ending, — 
Peace upon Earth, and Man regenerate! 

Only through Me can come the great awaking; 
Wrong cannot right the wrongs that Wrong hath done; 
Only through Me, all other gods forsaking. 
Can ye attain the heights that must be won. 

Only through Me shall Victory be sounded; 

Only through Me can Right wield righteous sword; 



GOLDEN BOYS 49 

Only through Me shall Peace be siirely founded ; 

Only through Me! . . . Then bid Me to the Board!" 

Can we not rise to such great height of glory? 
Shall this vast sorrow spend itself in vain? 
Shall future ages tell the woful story, — 
"Christ by His own was crucified again"? 

GOLDEN BOYS 

WINIFRED M. LETTS 

Not harps and palms for these, O God, 

Nor endless rest within the courts of heaven — 

These happy boys who left the football-field, 

The hockey ground, the river, the eleven, 

In a far grimmer game, with high-elated souls, 

To score their goals. 

Let these, O God, still test their manhood's strength, 

Wrestle and leap and run, 

Feel sea and wind and sun ; 

With Cherubim contend; 

The timeless morning spend 

In great celestial games. 

Let there be laughter and a merry noise 

Now that the fields of Heaven shine 

With all these golden boys. 



WHY WE FIGHT 1 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

At the outbreak of the war our people were stunned, 
blinded, terrified by the extent of the world disaster. 
Those among our leaders who were greedy, those who 
were selfish and ease-loving, those who were timid and 
those who were merely short-sighted, all joined to blind- 
fold the eyes and dull the conscience of the people so that 
it might neither see iniquity nor gird its loins for the 
inevitable struggle. But at last we stand with our faces 
to the light. At last we have faced our duty. Now it 
behooves us to do this duty with masterful efficiency. 

We are in the war. But we are not yet awake. We 
are passing through, in exaggerated form, the phase 
through which England passed during the first year of 
the war. A very large number of Englishmen fooled 
themselves with the idea that they lived on an island and 
were safe anyhow; that the war would soon be over, and 
that if they went on with their business as usual and 
waved flags and applauded patriotic speeches somebody 
else would do the fighting for them. England has seen 
the error of her way ; she has paid in blood and agony for 
her shortsightedness ; she is now doing her duty with stem 
resolution. We are repeating her early errors on a larger 
scale; and assuredly we shall pay heavily if we do not in 
time awake from our short-sighted apathy and foolish, 
self-sufficient optimism. 

We live on a continent. We have trusted to that fact 
for safety in the past; we do not understand that world 

1 From the speech delivered before the Moose Convention at Pitts- 
burgh, July 26, 191 7. 

50 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Theodore Roosevelt 



THE RIDERLESS HORSE 51 

conditions have changed, and that the oceans and even the 
air have become highways for miHtary aggression. The 
exploits of the German U-boat off Nantucket last summer 
— exploits which nothing but feebleness, considerations of 
political expediency, and downright lack of courage on our 
part permitted — showed that if Germany or any other 
possible opponent of ours were free to deal with us, the 
security that an ocean barrier once offered was anni- 
hilated. In other words, the battle front of Europe is 
slowly spreading over the whole world. Unless we beat 
Germany in Europe, we shall have to fight her deadly 
ambition on our own coasts and in our own continent. 
A great American army in Europe now is the best pos- 
sible insurance against a great European or Asiatic army 
in our own country a couple of years or a couple of 
decades hence. 

THE RIDERLESS HORSE 

HAROLD T. PULSIFER 

Close ranks and ride on ! 
Though his saddle be bare. 
The bullet is sped, 
Now the dead 
Cannot care. 
Close ranks and ride on ! 
Let the pitiless stride 
Of the host that he led, 
Though his saddle be red, 
Sweep on like the tide. 
Close ranks and ride on 1 
The banner he bore 
For God and the right 



52 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Never faltered before. 
Quick, up with it, then! 
For the right ! For the Hght ! 
Lest legions of men 
Be lost in the night ! 

A CAVALRY CATCH 

WILLIAM SHARP 
Up ! for the bugles are calling. 
Saddle, to boot, and away! 
Sabres are clanking, and lances are glancing, 
The colonel is swearing and horses are prancing. 
So up with the sabres and lances, 
Up a.nd away! 

Where are we off to, say? 

Saddle, and boot, and away! 
With a thunder of hoofs in a rush we go past. 
In a whirlwind of dust we are gone as a blast — 

For we 're off with the sabres and lances, 
Off and away ! 

A LULLABY 

G. R. GLASGOW 

Because some men in khaki coats 

Are marching out to war, 
Beneath a torn old flag that floats 

As proudly as before; 
Because they will not stop or stay, 

But march with eager tread, 
A little baby far away 

Sleeps safely in her bed. 



A LULLABY 

Because some grim, gray sentinels 

Stand always silently, 
Where each dull shadow falls and swells, 

Upon a restless sea; 
Because their lonely watch they keep, 

With keen and wakeful eyes, 
A little child may safely sleep 

Until the sun shall rise. 

Because some swift and shadowy things 

Hold patient guard on high. 
Like birds or sails or shielding wings 

Against a stormy sky; 
Because a strange light spreads and sweeps 

Across a darkened way, 
A little baby softly sleeps 

Until the dawn of day. 



53 



OUR COMMON HERITAGE! 

ARTHUR J. BALFOUR 

Will you permit me, on behalf of my friends and 
myself, to offer you my deepest and sincerest thanks 
for the rare and valued honor which you have done us 
by receiving us here to-day? We all feel the greatness 
of this honor, but I think to none of us can it come home 
so closely as to one who, like myself, has been for forty- 
three years in the service of a free assembly like your own. 
I rejoice to think that a member — a very old member, I 
am sorry to say — of the British House of Commons has 
been received here to-day by this great sister assembly 
with such kindness as you have shown to me and to my 
friends. 

Ladies and gentlemen, these two assembhes are the 
greatest and the oldest in the world of the free assemblies 
now governing great nations. The histor}^ indeed of 
the two is very different. The beginnings of the British 
House of Commons go back to a dim historic past, and its 
full rights and status have only been conquered and per- 
manently secured after centuries of political struggle. 
Your fate has been a happier one. You were called into 
existence at a much later stage of social development. 
You came into being complete and perfected and all your 
powers determined, and your place in the Constitution 
secured beyond chance of revolution; but, though the 
history of these two great assemblies is different, each of 
them represents the great democratic principle to which 

1 Delivered before the House of Representatives, Washington, on 
May 5, 1917. 

54 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Arthur James Balfour 



OUR COMMON HERITAGE 55 

we look forward as the security for the future peace 
of the world. All of the free assemblies now to be found 
governing the great nations of the earth have been 
modeled either upon your practice or upon ours, or upon 
both combined. 

Mr. Speaker, the compliment paid to the mission from 
Great Britain by such an assembly and upon such an 
occasion is one not one of us is ever likely to forget, but 
there is something, after all, even deeper and more 
significant in the circumstances under which I now have 
the honor to address you, than any which arise out of 
the interchange of courtesies, however sincere, between 
two great and friendly nations. We all, I think, feel 
instinctively that this is one of the great moments in the 
history of the world and that what is now happening on 
both sides of the Atlantic represents the drawing together 
of great and free peoples for mutual protection against the 
aggression of military despotism. 

I am not one of those and none of you are among those 
who are such bad democrats as to say that democracies 
make no mistakes. All free assemblies have made blun- 
ders; -sometimes they have committed crimes. Why is 
it, then, that we look forward to the spread of free insti- 
tutions throughout the world, and especially among our 
present enemies, as one of the greatest guaranties of the 
future peace of the world? 

I will say to you, gentlemen, how it seems to me. 

It is quite true that the people and the representatives 
of the people may be betrayed by some momentary gust 
of passion into a policy which they ultimately deplore, 
but it is only a military despotism of the German 
type that can, through generations, if need be, pursue 



56 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

steadily, remorselessly, unscrupulously, and appallingly 
the object of dominating the civilization of mankind. 

And, mark you, this evil, this menace under which we 
are now suffering, is not one which diminishes with the 
growth of knowledge and progress of material civilization, 
but on the contrary it increases with them. 

When I was young, we used to flatter ourselves that 
progress inevitably meant peace, and that growth of 
knowledge was always accompanied as its natural fruit 
by the growth of good will among the nations of the earth. 
Unhappily we know better now, and we know there is 
such a thing in the world as a power which can, with un- 
varying persistence, focus all the resources of knowledge 
and of civilization into the one great task of making itself 
the moral and material master of the world. 

It is against that danger that we, the free peoples of 
western civilization, have banded ourselves together. 

It is in that great cause that we are going to fight and 
are fighting at this very moment side by side. In that 
cause we shall surely conquer; and our children will look 
back to this fateful date as the one from which democ- 
racies can feel secure that their progress, their civilization, 
their rivalry, if need be, will be conducted, not on German 
lines, but in the friendly and Christian spirit which really 
befits the age in which we live. 

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, I beg most sincerely 
to repeat again how heartily I thank you for the cordial 
welcome which you have given us to-day, and to repeat 
my profound sense of the significance of this unique 
meeting. 



PEACE HYMN FOR ENGLAND AND AMERICA 57 
PEACE HYMN FOR ENGLAND AND AMERICA 

GEORGE HUNTINGTON 
Two empires by the sea, 
Two nations great and free, 

One anthem raise. 
One race of ancient fame. 
One tongue, one faith, we claim; 
One God, whose glorious name 

We love and praise. 

What deeds our fathers wrought, 
What battles we have fought, 

Let fame record. 
Now, vengeful passion cease. 
Come, victories of peace; 
Nor hate nor pride's caprice 

Unsheathe the sword. 

Though deep the sea, and wide, 
'Twixt realm and realm, its tide 

Binds strand and strand. 
So be the gulf between 
Gray coasts and islands green 
With bonds of peace serene 

And friendship spanned. 

Now, may the God above 
Guard the dear land we love. 

Both east and west. 
Let love more fervent glow 
As peaceful ages go, 
And strength yet stronger grow, 

Blessing and blest. 



58 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

MALBROUK— ET NOUS 

When the great Duke Marlborough took the field 

The ladies waved and the belfries pealed, 

The cottars shouted from roofs and ricks, 

The drum-boys flourished their polished sticks, 

The cymbals clashed and the trumpets played 

A brazen, clarion fanfarade. 

Behind the lumbering cannon paced 

The scarlet infantry, frogged and laced; 

In velvets, ruffles and crimped perukes 

The noble gentlemen of the Duke's 

Terrible cavalry jingled by, 

With banners splendid against the sky. 

War is not what it was of yore; 

Our trumpets lie in the Depot store. 

Our colors hang in the Depot mess. 

We're not conspicuous in our dress. 

Leather and khaki, drab and tan 

Is the dernier cri for a fighting man ; 

But we like our noise, and we make a band 

Of any old thing that comes to hand, 

And we throw our chests and we shift our shins 

To penny-whistles and biscuit tins. 

Though we drum to war on a biscuit lid 

We '11 do as the great Duke Marlborough did. 

— From Punch 



THE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS ^ 

WOODROW WILSON 

The program has conferred an unmerited dignity upon 
the remarks I am going to make by calHng them an 
address, because I am not here to deliver an address. I 
am here merely to show in my official capacity the sym- 
pathy of this great Government with the object of this 
occasion, and also to speak just a word of the sentiment 
that is in my own heart. 

Any memorial day of this sort is, of course, a day 
touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not 
see how we can have any thought of pity for the men 
whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. 
I envy them, rather, because their great work for liberty 
is accomplished, and we are in the midst of a work unfin- 
ished, testing our strength where their strength already 
has been tested. 

There is a touch of sorrow, but there is also a touch of 
reassurance in a day like this, because we know how 
the men of America have responded to the call of the cause 
of liberty, and it fills our mind with a perfect assurance 
that that response will come again in equal measures, 
with equal majesty, and with a result which will hold the 
attention of all mankind. 

When you reflect upon it, these men who died to pre- 
serve the Union died to preserve the instrument which 
we are now using to serve the world — a free nation espous- 
ing the cause of human liberty. In one sense the great 



iProm the speech delivered May 30, 191 7. 

59 



6o THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

struggle into which we have now entered is an American 
struggle, because it is in defense of American honor and 
American rights, but it is something even greater than 
that; it is a world struggle. It is the struggle of men who 
love liberty everywhere; and in this cause America will 
show herself greater than ever because she will rise to a 
greater thing. 

We have said in the beginning that we planned this 
great Government that men who wish freedom might have 
a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be 
realized, and now, having established such a Government, 
having preserved such a Government, having vindicated 
the power of such a Government, we are saying to all 
mankind, '*We did not set this Government up in order 
that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we 
are now ready to come to your assistance and fight out 
upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty." 

No man can be glad that such things have happened 
as we have witnessed in these last fateful years, but 
perhaps it may be permitted to us to be glad that we have 
an opportunity to show the principles which we profess 
to be living — principles which live in our hearts — and to 
have a chance by pouring out of our blood and treasure 
to vindicate the things which we have professed. For, 
my friends, the real fruition of life is to do the things we 
have said we wished to do. There are times when words 
seem empty and only action seems great. Such a time 
has come, and in the providence of God, America will once 
more have an opportunity to show to the world that she 
was born to serve mankind. 



GETTYSBURG ADDRESS > 6i 

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Hberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 
can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of 
that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that 
field as a final resting place for those who here gave their 
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — v/e can not 
consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse- 
crated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The 
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, 
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, 
the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished 
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly 
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us — that from these honored 
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which 
they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain 
— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
freedom — and that government of the people, by the 
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



62 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT 

(In Springfield, Illinois) 

VACHEL LINDSAY 

It is portentous, and a thing of state 
That here at midnight, in our little town 
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest. 
Near the old courthouse pacing up and down, 

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards 
He lingers where his children used to play. 
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones 
He stalks until the dawn-stars bum away. 

A bronzed, lank man ! His suit of ancient black, 
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl 
Make him the quaint great figure that men love, 
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. 

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. 
He is among us : — as in times before ! 
And we who toss and lie awake for long 
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. 

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. 
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? 
Too many peasants fight, they know not why. 
Too many homesteads in black terror weep. 

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. 
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. 
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now 
The bitterness, the folly and the pain. 



UNION 63 

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn 
Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free: 
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth, 
Bringing long peace to Comland, Alp and Sea. 

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, 
That all his hours of travail here for men 
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace 
That he may sleep upon his hill again ? 

UNION 

VIRGINIA FRASER BOYLE 

Out of the mists and the storms of the years, 
Out of the glory of triiunph and tears. 
Out of the ashes of hope and of fears, 
The Old South still leads on. 

She is bringing to-day what her hands have wrought. 
What her mother's heart at her knee has taught — 
Her treasure of time that her blood has bought — 
To lay at the Nation's feet. 

Not the tattered things which she waves to-day — 
Not the Stars and Bars she has laid away, 
Nor the bended forms in their coats of gray — 
Her wondrous pledge to the past ; 

But the spirit that stirs through the dust of the grave, 
Wherever the flags of the Union wave ; 
The valor the God of her heroes gave 
To freedom and liberty. 



64 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

She comes with the cry that led her on, 
When freedom and Hberty first were born — 
And the name of her peerless Washington — 
The rugged strength of her days. 

She has kept unmixed, through her years of pain, 
America's blood in its purest vein; 
As she gave to the past, she gives again 
For the glory of her land. 

With a patriot's faith in the days to be, 
She is pressing the seal of destiny 
With the fame of her Jackson and her Lee — 
The heritage of her sons. 

And she sees in her ruddy boy to-day, 
In his khaki coat, her lad in gray. 
And back of the drums her heartstrings play, 
When the bugles shout and call. 

But her mother love is not dismayed — 
She has laid her treasure unafraid 
On the shrine where the sad-eyed Lincoln prayed 
That the Union might not break. 

How they troop, that host that can never die ! 
A nation's heroes passing by — 
The spirits that brook nor earth nor sky — 
For the deathless dead have heard: 

They are marching out with a shadowy lance, 
With the sons of sons to the fields of France ; 



UNION 65 

And they stand at the guns while the bullets glance, 
Where England fights to win. 

Oh ! hallowed earth of the brave and the free — 
Oh ! pledges of life and liberty — 
They are keeping the tryst on the land and the sea, 
Of a nation forever one ! 

Read in Washington to Veterans of the Confederacy, 19 17. 



SUPPORTING THE GOVERNMENT ^ . 

ELIHU ROOT 

The declaration of war between the United States and 
Germany completely changed the relations of all the 
inhabitants of this country to the subject of peace and 
war. 

Before the declaration everybody had a right to discuss 
in private and in public the question whether the United 
States should carry on war against Germany. Every- 
body had a right to argue that there was no sufficient cause 
for war, that the consequences of war would be worse 
than the consequences of continued peace, that it would 
be wiser to submit to the aggressions of Germany against 
American rights, that it would be better to have Germany 
succeed than to have the allies succeed in the great conflict. 

Everybody holding these views had a right by express- 
ing them to seek to influence public opinion and to affect 
the action of the President and the Congress, to whom the 
people of the country by their constitution have entrusted 
the power to determine whether the United States shall or 
shall not make war. 

But the question of peace or war has now been decided 
by the President and Congress, the sole authorities which 
had the right to decide, the lawful authorities who rested 
under the duty to decide. The question no longer remains 
open. It has been determined and the United States is 
at war with Germany. 

The decision was made by overwhelming majorities of 
both houses of Congress. When such a decision has been 

1 From the speech deHvered at Chicago September 14, 1917. 

66 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Elihu Root 



SUPPORTING THE GOVERNMENT 67 

made the duties — and therefore the rights — of all the 
people of the country immediately change. 

It becomes their duty to stop discussion upon the ques- 
tion decided, and to act, to proceed immediately to do 
everything in their power to enable the government of 
their country to succeed in the war upon which the 
country has entered. 

It is a fundamental necessity of government that it 
shall have the power to decide great questions of policy 
and to act upon its decision. In order that there shall be 
action following a decision once made, the decision must 
be accepted. Discussion upon the question must be 
deemed closed. 

A nation which declares war and goes on discussing 
whether it ought to have declared war or not is impotent, 
paralyzed, imbecile, and earns the contempt of mankind 
and the certainty of humiliating defeat and subjection to 
foreign control. 

A democracy which cannot accept its own decisions, 
made in accordance with its own laws, but must keep on 
endlessly discussing questions already decided, has failed 
in the fundamental requirements of self-government; 
and, if the decision is to make war, the failure to exhibit 
capacity for self-government by action will inevitably 
result in the loss of the right of self-government. 

Before the decision of a proposal to make war, men 
may range themselves upon one side or the other of the 
question ; but after the decision in favor of war, is made, 
the country has ranged itself, and the only issue left for 
the individual citizen is whether he is for or against his 
country. From that time on arguments against the war 
in which the country is engaged are enemy arguments. 



68 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

There are doubtless some who do not understand what, 
this struggle really is. Some who were bom here resent 
interference with their comfort and prosperity, and the 
demands for sacrifice which seem to them unnecessary 
and they fail to see that the time has come when, if 
Americans are to keep the independence and liberty which 
their fathers won by suffering and sacrifice, they in their 
turn must fight again for the preservation of that inde- 
pendence and liberty. 

Somebody has to decide where armies are to fight, 
whether our territory is to be defended by waiting here 
until we are attacked or by going out and attacking the 
enemy before they get here. The power to make that 
decision and the duty to make it rest under the constitu- 
tion of this country with the President as commander- 
in-chief. 

When the President has decided that the best way to 
beat Germany is to send American troops to France and 
Belgium, that is the way the war must be carried on, if 
at all. I think the decision was wise. Others may think 
it unwise. But, when the decision has been made, what 
we think is immaterial. The commander-in-chief, with 
all the advice and all the wisdom he can command, has 
decided when and where the American army is to move. 
The army must obey, and all loyal citizens of the country 
will do their utmost to niake that movement a success. 

This is a war of defense. It is perfectly described in 
the words of the constitution which established this 
nation: "To provide for the common defense" and "To 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity." 

The national defense demands not merely force, but 



SUPPORTING THE GOVERNMENT 69 

intelligence. It requires foresight, consideration of the 
policies and purposes of other nations, understanding of 
the inevitable or probable consequences of the acts of 
other nations, judgment as to the time when successful 
defense may be made, and when it will be too late, and 
prompt action before it is too late. 

For many years we have pursued our peaceful course of 
internal development protected in a variety of ways. 
We were protected by the law of nations to which all 
civilized governments have professed their allegiance. So 
long as we committed no injustice ourselves we could not 
be attacked without a violation of that law. 

We were protected by a series of treaties under which 
all the principal nations of the earth agreed to respect 
our rights and to maintain friendship with us. We were 
protected by an extensive system of arbitration created 
by or consequent upon the peace conferences at The 
Hague, and under which all controversies arising under 
the law and under treaties were to be settled peaceably 
by arbitration and not by force. 

We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean sepa- 
rating us from all great military powers, and by the bold 
assertion of the Monroe Doctrine that if any of those 
powers undertook to overpass the ocean and establish 
itself upon these western continents that would be re- 
garded as dangerous to the peace and safety of the 
United States, and would call upon her to act in her 
defense. 

We were protected by the fact that the policy and the 
fleet of Great Britain were well known to support the, 
Monroe Doctrine. We were protected by the delicate 
balance of power in Europe which made it seem not worth 



70 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

while for any power to engage in a conflict here at the 
risk of suffering from its rivals there. All these protec- 
tions were swept away by the war which began in Europe 
in 1914. 

America's independence would be gone unless she was 
ready to fight for it, and her security would thenceforth 
be not a security of freedom, but only a security ptirchased 
by submission. 

Congress has been in continuous session passing with 
unprecedented rapidity laws containing grants of power 
and of money unexampled in our history. The executive 
establishment has been straining every nerve to prepare 
for war. The ablest and strongest leaders of industrial 
activity have been called from all parts of the country to 
aid the government. 

The people of the country have generously responded 
with noble loyalty and enthusiasm to the call for the 
surrender of money and of customary rights, and the sup- 
ply of men to the service of the country. 

This is no ordinary war which the world is waging. It 
is no contest for petty policies and profits. It is a mighty 
and all-embracing struggle between two conflicting prin- 
ciples of human right and human duty. 

It is a conflict between the divine right of kings to gov- 
ern mankind through armies and nobles and the right of 
the peoples of the earth to toil and endure and aspire to 
govern themselves by law in the freedom of individual 
manhood. 

It is the climax of the supreme struggle between autoc- 
racy and democracy. No nation can stand aside and be 
free from its effects. The two systems cannot endure 
together in the same world. 



SUPPORTING THE GOVERNMENT 71 

If autocracy triumphs, military power lustful of domin- 
ion, supreme in strength, intolerant of human rights, 
holding itself superior to law, to morals, to faith, to com- 
passion, will crush out the free democracies of the world. 
If autocracy is defeated and nations are compelled to 
recognize the rules of law and of morals, then and then 
only will democracy be safe. 

To this great conflict for human rights and human 
liberty America has committed herself. There can be 
no backward step. There must be either humiliating and 
degrading submission or terrible defeat or glorious victory. 
It was no human will that brought us to this pass. It was 
not the President. It was not Congress. It was not the 
press. It was not any political party. It was not any 
section or part of our people. 

It was that in the providence of God the mighty forces 
that determine the destinies of mankind beyond the con- 
trol of human purpose have brought to us the time, the 
occasion, the necessity, that this peaceful people so long 
enjoying the blessings of liberty and justice for which 
their fathers fought and sacrificed shall again gird them- 
selves for conflict, and with all the forces of manhood 
nurtured and strengthened by liberty offer again the 
sacrifice of possessions and of life itself, that this nation 
may still be free, that the mission of American democracy 
shall not have failed, that the world 'shall be free. 



Breathes there the man, with soul so dead. 
Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land? 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 



72 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

As home his footsteps he hath turned 

From wandering on a foreign strand? 
If such there breathe, go, mark him well; 
For him no minstrel raptures swell; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, — 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch, concentred all in self, 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

— From Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel' 



'OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS" 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

Of old sat Freedom on the heights. 

The thunders breaking at her feet : 
Above her shook the starry lights : 

She heard the torrents meet. 

There in her place she did rejoice, 

Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind. 
But fragments of her mighty voice 

Came rolling on the wind. 

Then stept she down thro* town and field 

To mingle with the human race, 
And part by part to men reveal'd 

The fulness of her face — 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 73 

Grave mother of majestic works, 

From her isle-altar gazing down, 
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks. 

And King-like, wears the crown: 

Her open eyes desire the truth. 

The wisdom of a thousand years 
Is in them. May perpetual youth 

Keep dry their Hght from tears; 

That her fair form may stand and shine. 
Make bright our days and light our dreams. 

Turning to scorn with lips divine 
The falsehood of extremes ! 

THE PRESENT CRISIS 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to 

decide. 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil 

side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the 

bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon 

the right , 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and 

that light. 
********* 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou 

shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust 

against our land? 



74 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is 

strong, 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her 

throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all 

wrong. 
********* 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but 

record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and 

the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 

throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim 

unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 

his own. 



CARRY ON! 

ROBERT W. SERVICE 

It's easy to fight when everything's right. 

And you're mad with the thrill and the glory; 

It's easy to cheer when victory's near, 

And wallow in fields that are gory. 

It's a different song when everything's wrong, 

When you're feeling infernally mortal; 

When it 's ten against one, and hope there is none, 

Buck up, little soldier, and chortle: 



CARRY ON! 75 

Carry on ! Carry on ! 
There isn't much punch in your blow. 
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind; 
You 're muddy and bloody, but never you mind. 
Carry on! Carry on! 
You have n't the ghost of a show. 
It's looking like death, but while you've a breath. 
Carry on, my son ! Carry on ! 

And so in the strife of the battle of life 
It's easy to fight when you're winning; 
It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave, 
When the dawn of success is beginning. 
But the man who can meet despair and defeat 
With a cheer, there's the man of God's choosing; 
The man who can fight to Heaven's own height 
Is the man who can fight when he's losing. 

Carry on! Carry on! 
Things never were looming so black. 
But show that you have n't a cowardly streak, 
And though you 're unlucky you never are weak 
Carry on ! Carry on ! 
Brace up for another attack. 
It *s looking like hell, but — you never can tell : . 
Carry on, old man ! Carry on ! 



CHANGES AHEAD 1 

MARION LeROY BURTON 

When we speak of changes that are ahead, the most 
serious question which you and I must meet is, Can the 
democratic American government be made efficient? 
That is the question that has been raised about democratic 
government from the days of Plato to the present. You 
and I know that it is a httle difficult for us at times to 
assert, without any qualifications, that democracy can 
be made efficient. When one thinks of the scandal of 
American politics, of the corruption, the bribery, the 
intrigue, and the duplicity, then it is not possible for 
him to consider with great composure some of the things 
that are said by the keen, discriminating persons who 
try to find out whether we are wise, economical, and effi- 
cient in the administration of our affairs. Think of the 
Philadelphia Gas ring, think of the Tweed ring, think of 
New York city at the present moment. Think of the 
beautiful capitol of the great Empire state of New 
York, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, with 
its magnificently carved mahogany ceilings — until one 
day a janitor accidentally slipped off a rafter and his feet 
went through brown paper! 

You and I are perfectly aware of the fact that these are 
only superficial observations and comments upon politics 
and statesmanship and municipal administration in 
America. You and I must admit, candidly and frankly, 
that all of these things can be said with remarkable 



1 From the speech delivered at St. Cloud, Minn., October 17, ipi?- 

76 




Photo by Miller, Minneapolis, Minn 

Marion LeRoy BtRxoN 



CHANGES AHEAD 77 

accuracy about our government. But you and I know 
something that most of our foreign critics never sense. 
They always interpret us in the terms of our successful 
and superficial materialism, and they do not come to 
see that back of all of these external things there is here 
the finest spirit of idealism that permeates any nation of 
the world to-day. 

You and I know that American government is not what 
the carping critic says it is, but we know that it is what 
you and I dream in our best moments it shall be when we 
have brought to pass the things for which we are striving ; 
that is what American government really is. It is just 
what you and I determine it shall be. 

But there is another change which we must meet, and 
it is the thing which gives me pause and serious concern. 
Somehow we must get to the one hundred millions of our 
people a new conception of what democracy really is. 
You and I haA^e imagined in the past that democracy is 
a form of government which is responsible to the people. 
That is true. But we must see that there are two sides 
to this shield. We must recognize on the one hand that 
the government which we make is responsible to us. 
But more and more, particularly in times of war, we must 
understand too that the people are responsible to the 
government. 

Now how are we going to get that ? How are we going 
to have the people see that once they have constituted 
government, then it is their duty to be loyal to that 
authority and to place at its disposal absolutely everything 
they have? For in this time of war our duty is not simply 
the making of a great army, but it is recognizing clearly 
the principle of the selective draft, that every man, 



78 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

woman, and child within the confines of the United States 
of America must deHver his full strength for the govern- 
ment. It is a question of putting an entire nation of one 
hundred million people under arms. Somehow, some 
way, you and I, as those who are responsible for com- 
munities, must see to it that our people get a deepened 
consciousness of their individual responsibility. Now 
how are we going to secure such a result? 

One way we are going to get it is to have them see the 
clearness, the seriousness, and the finality of the issue 
in which we are now engaged. Why, men, it is absolutely 
final. We are witnessing the death grapple of two of 
the most gigantic ideas that have ever animated con- 
flicting nations. On the one side is ruthlessness and 
f rightfulness and barbarism and militarism and autocracy, 
and on the other side is good will and brotherhood and 
freedom and equality and education and opportunity 
and democracy. 

Is there any question as to where we ought to stand? 
Are there two sides to this issue? Sometimes a man has 
the stupidity to say to me that he is not pro-German 
but that he is against the war. Before he can get his 
mouth shut I say to him, "You are pro-German, for 
*he that is not for us is against us.' " 

If ever there was any truth in the sayings of our Master 
there is truth in this one, "Ye cannot serve God and 
mammon." If there was ever a holy war this is a holy 
war! 

Do you suppose that we are in this war for conquest 
or for territory? We are not out for conquest, or for the 
crushing of any people, or with any false motive, but we 
have gone into this war for just what President Wilson 



HYMN OF FREEDOM 79 

said, "to make the world safe for democracy." We 
must recognize that upon the solution of the problems of 
Central Europe hangs the fate of American civilization. 

HYMN OF FREEDOM 

MARY PERRY KING 

Unfurl the flag of Freedom, 

Fling far the bugle blast ! 
There comes a sound of marching 

From out the mighty past. 
Let every peak and valley 

Take up the valiant cry : 
Where, beautiful as morning 

Our banner cuts the sky. 

Free-born to peace and justice. 

We stand to guard and save 
The liberty of manhood. 

The faith our fathers gave. 
Then soar aloft, Old Glory, 

And tell the waiting breeze 
No law but Right and Mercy 

Shall rule the Seven Seas. 

No hate is in our anger. 

No vengeance in our wrath, 
We hold the line of freedom 

Across the tyrant's path. 
Where'er oppression vaunt eth 

We loose the sword once more 
To stay the feet of conquest, 

And pray an end of war. 



PATRIOTISM 

LYMAN ABBOTT 

A nation is made great, not by its fruitful acres, but by 
the men who cultivate them; not by its great forests, but 
by the men who use them; not by its mines, but by the 
men who work in them; not by its railways, but by the 
men who build and run them. America was a great 
land when Columbus discovered it ; Americans have made 
it a great Nation. 

In 1776 our fathers had a vision of a new Nation "con- 
ceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal." Without an army they fought 
the greatest of existing world empires that they might 
realize this vision. A third of a century later without a 
navy they fought the greatest navy in the world, that 
they might win for their Nation the freedom of the seas. 
Half a century later they fought through an unparalleled 
Civil War that they might establish for all time on this 
continent the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. A third of a century later they 
fought to emancipate an oppressed neighbor, and, victory 
won, gave back Cuba to the Cubans, sent an army of 
schoolmasters to educate for liberty the Filipinos, asked 
no war indemnity from their vanquished enemy, but paid 
him liberally for his property. Meanwhile they offered 
land freely to any farmer who would live upon and culti- 
vate it, opened to foreign immigrants on equal terms the 
door of industrial opportunity, shared with them political 
equality, and provided by universal taxation for universal 
education, 

80 




Photo by Brown Bros. 



Lyman Abbott 



EARTH CALLS TO HEAVEN 8i 

The cynic who can see in this history only a theme for 
his egotistical satire is no true American, whatever his 
parentage, whatever his birthplace. He who looks with 
pride upon this history which his fathers have written 
by their heroic deeds, who accepts with gratitude the 
inheritance which they have bequeathed to him, and who 
highly resolves to preserve this inheritance unimpaired 
and to pass it on to his descendants enlarged and enriched, 
is a true American, be his birthplace or his parentage what 
it may. 

— From The Outlook, June, 191 6 



EARTH CALLS TO HEAVEN 

WILLIAM PIERSON MERRILL 

God, to Thee Thy earth is calling 
With a stem and bitter cry. 

Hatred, anguish, death appalling 
In thick clouds about us lie. 

All the youth are fighting, falling, 
Driven forth in bands to die. 

Wilt Thou make an end forever? 

Shall the horror never cease ? 
Wilt Thou not to souls imprisoned 

Speak the word that brings release 
Shining through the storm of sorrow 

Set the rainbow of Thy peace? 

Yet if only by such anguish 

Can Thy righteous peace be won, 
Spare us not, O God of justice; 



82 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Finish what Thou hast begun. 
Make us bear the loss of all things, 
So Thy holy will be done. 

Let not all the wounds be wasted, 
Nor these dead have died in vain; 

By this war let war be smitten. 
Nevermore to rise again ; 

Set above all kings triumphant 
Him Whose right it is to reign. 

Let our Babel lie in fragments, 

Shattered by Thine iron rod; 
Let a mighty gro^i;h of freedom 

Blossom from the blood-soaked sod ; 
On the ruin of the nations 

Rear the Commonwealth of God. 

— From The Continent 



THE LITTLE STAR IN THE WINDOW 

JOHN JEROME ROONEY 

There 's a little star in the window of the house across the 

way, 
A little star, red-bordered, on a ground of pearly white ; 
I can see its gleam at evening; it is bright at dawn of day. 
And I know it has been shining through the long and 

dismal night. 

The folks who pass the window on the busy city street, 
I often notice, turn a glance before they hurry by, 



THE LITTLE STAR IN THE WINDOW 83 

And one, a gray haired woman, made curtsey low and 

sweet, 
While something like a teardrop was glistening in her eye. 

And yesterday an aged man, by life's stern battle spent 
His empty coat sleeve hanging down, a witness sadly 

mute. 
Gave one swift look and halted — his form full height, 

unbent — 
And ere he passed his hand came up in soldierly salute. 

The little star in the window is aflame with living fire, 
For it was lit at the hearthstone where a lonely mother 

waits ; 
And she has stained its crimson with the glow of her 

heart's desire. 
And brightened its pearl white heaven beyond the 

world's dark hates. 

The star shall shine through the battle when the shafts 
of death are hurled; 

It shall shine through the long night watches in the fore- 
most trenches' line; 

Over the waste of waters and beyond the verge of the 
world. 

Like the guiding Star of the Magi its blessed rays shall 
shine. 

The little star in the window shall beacon your boy's 

return 
As his eyes are set to the homeland, when the call of the 

guns shall cease; 



84 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

In the Flag's high constellation through the ages it shall 

bum, 
A pledge of his heart's devotion, a sign of his people's 

peace. 



"Our Father's God! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand. 

Oh, make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong: 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of Thy righteous law : 
And, cast in some diviner mold, 
Let the new cycle shame the old." 

— From Whittier's "Centennial Hymn" 



THE BATTLE BETWEEN RIGHT AND 
MIGHT 1 

FRANK O. LOWDEN 

If this war in which we are engaged shall go against 
us, every oration which has commemorated the efforts and 
the greatness of Washington must be revised. Instead 
of representing him, the noblest figure, as someone has 
said, who ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life, we 
shall have to set him down as one of those idle dreamers 
who dreamed of great things in vain, and whom a practical 
world has relegated to oblivion. There is not a thing for 
which he stood, there is not a hope which he ever enter- 
tained, there is not an idea of government for which he 
fought during those years of the Revolutionary War, 
that will not become obsolete if the Central Empires win 
in this war which is flaming all about the world. 

I want to remind you to-day that we are going through 
no more gloomy time than Washington, year after year, 
plodded through. And I want also to remind you that 
Washington — even Washington — could he have had his 
way and ended the war as early as he desired, would have 
missed the greatest service that in the end he rendered to 
humanity and the world. He was not for the separation 
of the colonies from the mother land. He said, time and 
time again in the early months of the war, that the colonies 
had no desire to set up independence, but that all they 
wished was to have the legal rights which they believed 
they were entitled to accorded to them by His Majesty's 
government in London. 

1 From the speech delivered before the Union League Club of 
Chicago, February 22, 191 8. 

85 



86 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Washington hoped that this bitter war between daugh- 
ter and mother might come to an end. And, as we look 
back now, we know that if Lexington and Concord and 
Bunker Hill had been won overwhelmingly by the Colon- 
ists, independence would not have come to the United 
States ; there would have been a reconciliation in all likeli- 
hood, and to-day instead of the proud, independent posi- 
tion we occupy among the nations of the earth, we would 
have been but a dependent of an empire across the sea. 

Oh, as we review the years of our history, no one can 
resist the conviction that there has been a divine guidance 
in all the great crises of our national life. It was necessary 
that we should lose Bunker Hill ; it was necessary that our 
armies should retreat year after year in order that the 
colonists might be compelled to declare independence from 
all nations and to set up for themselves. 

And when we come to the other great crisis in our life, 
the same was true. Lincoln had no intention, at the 
beginning of the Civil War, to abolish slavery. He said, 
time and time again, that the South was entitled under 
the constitution to the protection of slavery within the 
States where it existed. And, again, if we had won 
overwhelmingly the first battles of the Civil War, slavery 
would have remained, and the great accomplishment of 
Lincoln's life would not have been. It was necessary 
that our southern friends should fight, and fight so val- 
iantly that, simply as a war measure, we would be com- 
pelled, in order to survive, to declare the emancipation 
of the slaves. 

Again, those darkest years of the Civil War, years 
which some of you are old enough to recall, were not in 
vain, and we passed through the darkness and the shadow 



BATTLE BETWEEN RIGHT AND MIGHT 87 

in order that the high accomplishment of the freedom of 
four million slaves might come. 

And in this war, this war which girdles the very globe, 
there is some divine purpose hidden though it be, that 
requires us, following the example of Washington and 
Lincoln, to persist, no matter how dark the skies may 
be, until a final and decisive victory, which shall mean 
peace for ourselves and for our children for all time 
to come. 

It is the final battle, not only between the forces of 
autocracy and the forces of democracy, but it is the final 
battle between the forces of evil and the forces of right- 
eousness. It is the final conflict between justice and 
injustice. It is the final battle, which is to settle whether 
men, all men, whatever their condition in life, are entitled 
to their own liberty; whether they are entitled to rule 
themselves ; or whether the great masses of mankind must 
toil, toil everlastingly, in order that a few thousands may 
enjoy the blessings of the earth. 

That is what this war means, and there is no spot in all 
the earth so obscure that that spot can escape its conse- 
quences. It is just as fatal to America as it is to England, 
or France or Italy, if we lose this war. 

I do not mean to say that we might not, for a few years, 
maintain the form of our government; but its substance 
and its spirit would be gone; the freedom which has been 
our dearest possession all these years would have flown. 
We would listen to what the Imperial powers of Berlin 
might permit us to hear; we would read, as their own 
people do, the doctrines which had had Imperial approval. 
Our liberties we might retain in form for a few brief years, 
but that is all. 



88 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

The war is not three thousand miles away; the war 
is at your door and mine this very hoiu*. And, if we 
would preserve as sacred spots forevermore the tomb of 
Washington on the Potomac, and the tomb of Lincoln at 
Springfield; if we are unwilling they shall become the 
monuments of human folly and failure; if we are unwilling 
that Washington and Lincoln shall be known as fond 
dreamers who failed to make their dreams come true, we 
shall present a solidarity of our people which will abso- 
lutely insure success. 

As I said a little while ago, there is some divine, if 
hidden, purpose in this war. We may not see it now. 
Washington, in the bitterness of his defeat at Long Island 
and his retreat from there, could not see that there was a 
providence in that defeat which helped him to win the 
independence of America. Lincoln, in the bitterness of 
the defeat at the first battle of Bull Run, and the disasters 
that followed that battle, could not foresee the divine 
purpose in those defeats; but we now, in the light of later 
years, know that those defeats were necessary if slavery 
should be extinguished on this continent. 

Thus to-day we cannot see what the purpose is in this 
war, but that there is some purpose we must have the 
faith to believe. We do know that all was not well with 
us before the war came. We do know that there were 
great problems which we had not solved. We do know 
that civilization was not a complete success, even in 
America, before this war came on. We remember that 
we were becoming grossly materialistic people; and I 
think a thousand years from now, when the history of the 
nineteenth century is written, that century will be charac- 
terized as the century which developed materialism 



BATTLE BETWEEN RIGHT AND MIGHT 89 

more than an3rthmg else. We became enamored of 
the things which are seen, of the things which we can 
touch. We gloried in our invention, and we believed 
that science would fathom all the secrets of the universe, 
and that science was all-sufficient for human life. When 
the war broke out, we found that this same science of 
which we boasted as the greatest asset of democracy, was 
the greatest resource of war. It then seemed to us as 
though all our progress of a century was simply for the 
purpose of making war more terrible and more deadly 
than it had been in all its past. And we began to think 
that maybe there are other things in the universe than the 
things that you can see and touch and hold. 

We thought, before the war, that discipline was no 
longer of use. Discipline had broken down in the home, 
in the school, in the State; and we no longer believed that 
our citizenship was of priceless worth. We assumed 
that it was simply something that conferred privileges 
upon us but which exacted nothing in return. And now 
we see, when nations are breaking down all around us, 
that the dearest thing in all our possession is not a material 
thing at all. We are getting a new idea of what country 
means. We are having a revival of spiritual forces. 
And when this war is over, we shall have a better world 
than we have had in the past, I believe. The old sense 
of brotherhood which our fathers felt had disappeared. 
We were dividing into classes, forgetting that the 
only thing in all the world that will make men brothers 
is character and not possession. 

How fortunate it was that the two great figiures in our 
national past were more distinguished for character than 
they were for learning. How fortunate that Washington 



90 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

and Lincoln attained their colossal size not so much by 
their intellectual splendor as by their superb character. 

And in a democracy, if democracy is to survive, char- 
acter must always take the lead and direct the life. We 
shall have a better world when this war is over, and we 
must have the faith now to know that these sacrifices 
of our gallant boys are not being made in vain. 

We shall win if we shall only realize what the war 
means. God grant that our hearts and minds may be 
filled with the full significance of this last great battle 
between the material forces and the spiritual forces of 
the universe. 

God, who gavest men eyes 

To see a dream; 
God, who gavest men heart 

To follow the Gleam; 
God, who gavest men stars 

To find heaven by ; 
God, who madest men glad 

At need to die; 
Lord, from the hills again 

We hear thy drum ! 
God, who lovest free men, 
God, who lovest free men, 
God, who lovest free men, 

Lead on! We come. 

— From Hermann Hagedorn's Ode of Dedication 



TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 91 

"OVER THERE!" 

HARVEY M. WATTS 

Some day we '11 join them over there and know 
The haunting secret that lights up their face, 
Giving their humblest act a touch of grace 
As if all saw the vision in the glow 
Of Heaven ajar, as, lo, they cry "We go 
Comrades in arms of those who set the pace, 
Ready to fall if they but win the race 
Ere tyranny shall strike the fateful blow." — 
Some day ! Ah, yes, the long way over there 
We too shall tread since they have gladly gone 
As pioneers and paid the final toll ! 
So fear we not, as if in dull despair, 
To face with them the bright unending dawn. 
Lest saving life we lose all else, the soul ! 

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

BAYARD TAYLOR 

That late, in half -despair, I said: 
"The Nation's ancient life is dead; 
Her arm is weak, her blood is cold ; 
She hugs the peace that gives her gold, — 
The shameful peace, that sees expire 
Each beacon-light of patriot fire, 
And makes her court a traitors' den," — 
Forgive me this, my countrymen ! 

O, in your long forbearance grand, 
Slow to suspect the treason planned. 
Enduring wrong, yet hoping good 



92 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

For sake of olden brotherhood, 
How grander, how sublimer far 
At the roused Eagle's call ye are, 
Leaping from slumber to the fight. 
For Freedom and for Chartered Right ! 

Throughout the land there goes a cry; 
A sudden splendor fills the sky : 
From every hill the banners burst, 
Like buds by April breezes nurst ; 
In every hamlet, home, and mart. 
The fire-beat of a single heart 
Keeps time to strains whose pulses mix 
Our blood with that of Seventy-Six ! 
****** 

Draw forth your million blades as one; 
Complete the battle then begun! 
God fights with ye, and overhead 
Floats the dear banner of your dead. 
They, and the glories of the Past, 
The Future, dawning dim and vast. 
And all the holiest hopes of Man, 
Are beaming triumph in your van ! 

Slow to resolve, be swift to do ! 

Teach ye the False how fight the True ! 

How bucklered Perfidy shall feel 

In her black heart the Patriot's steel; 

How sure the bolt that Justice wings ; 

How weak the arm a traitor brings ; 

How mighty they, who steadfast stand 

For Freedom's Flag and Freedom's Land ! 



THE EDUCATION WE ARE FIGHTING FORi 

HENRY VAN DYKE 

We Americans are in this war because the claim that 
Germany has been chosen and empowered of God to rule 
the world by might does not suit us. We do not believe 
it. We are in this war because that claim in its contemp- 
tuous "will to power" has trampled upon our sovereign 
rights, has murdered our citizens upon the high seas, and 
has put our existence as a free republic into peril. 

Do you believe that ? I do not see how you can believe 
anything else. This world is not big enough for the 
existence of a system of absolute military autocracy which 
claims the right to rule the world by might, and the 
existence of a real democracy which says that there must 
be a government of the people, by the people, for the 
people. 

We have been forced to fight. But do not misunder- 
stand me ; we are not fighting against the German theory 
of education — you can not fight against a theory, a thing 
of air. We are fighting against its results, treachery, 
violations, invasion, barbarism, cruelty, worldwide blood- 
shed and horror. We must show, or help to show, beside 
Great Britain and France, that those results are a failure 
and a sham. We must help to show that the world posi- 
tively can not be conquered and dominated in that way. 
We must go with France and Great Britain, Italy and 
Belgium to defeat the German arms on the land and the 
German submarines in the sea; and when victory is won, 
we can profitably and honorably begin a conversation 

iProm the address before The Convocation of New York in 191 8. 

93 



94 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

on peace, but not before. When that peace arrives — 
God grant it may be soon! — when that peace arrives, with 
restitution, reparation and guarantees of security for all 
the peoples who have suffered from the madness of the 
Potsdam pride, then perhaps the German people will 
realize that their education has been wrong and will set 
to work to change it. 

But I must confess that I care less about the democ- 
ratization of Germany, and the reform of German educa- 
tion, than I do about the thing which must precede them 
— a real victory over the kaiser's tools. 

Meantime, we Americans cling to the idea of education, 
which has made and sustained us. Learning without 
conscience is a vain and noxious thing. Its only result is 
to create a spectacled barbarism. Man does not exist 
to serve the state. The state exists to protect the rights 
of man. All governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed. Might does not make right, 
but right must gain might to survive. 

To-day we are fighting for that ideal beside our brave 
allies. It is the ideal of our hearts; it is the ideal that is 
in our education; it is the ideal that every one of your 
public school teachers to-day is trying to give to the 
children; it is the ideal that every one of our universities 
has put into its young men, and its bachelors of arts and 
its maids of arts, and its mistresses of arts, and its doctors 
of philosophy — it has put it into them — and that is why, 
when this battle burst upon the world, even before we 
were in it, hundreds and thousands of our young American 
high school and college and university trained youth, 
boys and girls, volunteers, rushed to the flag of France 
to fight by her side and help her to win the victory. 



A HYMN 95 

And now that we are in it, who are the best men in our 
officers' reserve corps and in our training camps? They 
are the men who have come from our higher institutions 
of learning, where they were taught not to worship autoc- 
racy, not to beheve that might is right, but to worship 
democracy under the guidance of a God whose right is the 
seal and sign of his omnipotent might. 

Let us hold fast to this faith, to this ideal ! Let The 
University of the State of New York see to it that nothing 
that is not democratic, free, liberal, ever comes into our 
education; that even in this stress of war, where we have 
to train soldiers to fight for peace, we do not become 
militaristic, we remain a democratic nation, a nation in 
which the state exists for the people. 

To-morrow, when we have made that ideal victorious 
against the German foe, v/e shall make it safe for all the 
world by a league of free nations to protect peace. 



A HYMN 

ROBERT GRANT 

O spirit of creation 

To whom our fathers prayed. 
Look down upon this nation 

Whose sons go unafraid 
Across the mine-strewn water 

To grapple with a foe 
That makes relentless slaughter 

And agonizes woe. 

Protect them, Oh, protect them, 
Our darlings blithe and brave, 



96 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

But should some fate elect them 
To fill a soldier's grave, 

Give us the grace to borrow 
The gladness they express 

To dignify our sorrow, 
Redeem our loneliness. 

We thank Thee for the vision 

Enabling us to see 
That peace which brought derision 

Was ruin to the free. 
At last our bonds are broken, 

At last the drum beats roll ; 
Ay ! by this myriad token 

Our country finds her soul. 

For now the heathen rages. 

And vaunting in his pride 
Would blot Thee from his pages 

To rule by fratricide. 
Oh, give them might to slay him 

Oh, give us faith to win. 
And utterly repay him 

With knowledge of his sin. 

Our flag will wear new glory 

Before our boys return. 
Its crimson stripes be gory, 

Its stars like planets bum; 
And many will be sleeping 

Upon a foreign shore, 
Yet still within Thy keeping, 

Jehovah, God of War! 



THE RETURN 97 

THE RETURN 

JOHN FREEMAN 

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke, 
The unintelHgible shock of hosts that still, 

Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again; 
And beauty flying naked down the hill. 

From mom to eve : and the stem night cried Peace ! 

And shut the strife in darkness: all was still. 
Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark — 

And I heard Beauty singing up the hill. 

— ^From The Westminster Gazette 



FIGHTING BATTLES WITH SPEECH AND PEN^ 

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 

It is difficult to draw nice distinctions in time of war. 
But there are some distinctions which must be drawn. 
The effective prosecution of war involves of necessity cer- 
tain restrictions in our accustomed freedom. With 
respect to property and business, with respect to life itself, 
freedom is restrained. Witness our War Defense and 
Conscription Acts, our broad plans of regulation by which 
manifold activities are controlled to an unusual degree. 
Of course, freedom of speech and of the press is also a 
relative freedom. There is no license to destroy the 
Nation or to turn it over helpless to its foes. There is no 
constitutional privilege for disloyalty, or for efforts to 
obstruct the enforcement of the law or to interfere with 
the war plans adopted by authority. But with due 
recognition of the difficulty of exact definition and close 
distinction, it is quite obvious that there is a field for 
honest criticism which cannot be surrendered without 
imperiling the essentials of liberty and the preservation of 
the Nation itself. Our officers of Government are not a 
privileged class. Even when equipped with the extraor- 
dinary powers of war, they are the servants of the Nation 
accountable for the exercise of their authority. 

When we are in the throes of war, united in the deter- 
mination to win, and conscious that we can win only by 
united effort, there is no place for partisanship with respect 

1 From the speech delivered at the dinner of the American Newspaper 
PubHshers Association in New York, April 25, 1918. 

98 



FIGHTING BATTLES WITH SPEECH AND PEN 99 

to the conduct of the war. In the phrase of Lincoln, we 
must meet "upon a level one step higher than any party 
platform" because from such more elevated position we 
can "do better battle for the country we love than we 
possibly can from those lower ones where from the force 
of habit, the prejudices of the past and selfish hopes of the 
future, we are sure to expend much of our ingenuity and 
strength in finding fault with and aiming blows at each 
other." I stand on that platform supporting the Presi- 
dent of the United States. But that is a counsel not for 
Republicans alone but for Democrats as well — for those 
in office as well as for those out of office. We may reserve 
our partisan differences for other matters than the war 
— for policies aside from the conduct of the war. In this 
great crisis we bend our common strength to fight our 
common battle and we speak not as Democrats or as 
Republicans, but as citizens whose only rivalry is in their 
zeal to win. 

Of course, it is just as easy to be a partisan in assailing 
criticism as in criticism itself. The man who defends 
everything that is done by his party or his party leaders 
is just as partisan as the man who assails everything that 
the opposing party does or plans. War demands fighting 
men who see straight and shoot straight. It also demands 
fighting critics who see straight and are honest and candid 
in criticism,. It is a commonplace that a public officer 
learns more from his critics than he does from his admirers. 
He seldom learns from anyone but his critics. If we had 
to choose between partisanship with criticism and the 
absence of both partisanship and criticism, I should 
unhesitatingly choose the former, for while the venomous 
shafts of partisan malice seldom hit the mark, the country 



100 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

cannot afford to turn its destiny over to anyone who is 
guaranteed immunity from candid criticism. 

It goes without saying that the country should have the 
facts. Plainly, there are matters which for military 
reasons must be concealed so as not to aid the enemy. 
But any one who conceals facts even in war time has 
a heavy burden of proof as to the necessity for such 
concealment. 

Furnishing material for criticism is by no means the 
same thing as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. 
Let the truth be known. The anxiety should be not to 
avoid disclosure but rather to prevent error. Rarely 
will the enemy be the gainer from our knowledge of 
the facts. He will thrive on our apprehensions and 
our misconceptions. 

The world will never be made safe for democracy, in 
the last analysis, by anything short of a dominant sense 
of fairness and justice. A contemptible purveyor of 
slander, of malicious abuse of officers, of half-truths calcu- 
lated to deceive, of demagogical appeal in order to win 
affluence, influence and political power by preying upon 
ignorance and natural aspirations — that is the lurking 
enemy of our institutions which it is harder to defeat than 
even a Prussian autocrat. The extent of the impotency 
of this lurking enemy is the measure of our ultimate 
victory. 

This is a time of rare privilege for the men who can go 
abroad to fight. It is also a time of rare privilege for 
those who stay at home to fight battles of speech and pen. 
Our trust is in both pen and sword — the pen to support 
the sword — the sword to make way for new victories of 
the pen. In the present situation, with Germany using 



FIGHTING BATTLES WITH SPEECH AND PEN loi 

up its man-power with the mad recklessness of despera- 
tion, we have a peculiar responsibility. Our Allies are 
holding the Western line with grim determination. 
They have held this line — our line — Liberty's line, the 
line of a world of freedom, of law, of decency, the line of 
all that is left of civilization as opposed to cynical force, 
to imparalleled brutality, to fiendish perversion of science, 
to the disregard of everything sacred and humane — our 
Allies are holding this line awaiting our arrival. They 
have been holding a bloody vigil. They have more dead 
in France than we shall have there living in arms for 
many months to come. But we are coming. Our forces 
are growing daily. We are not living in retrospect. 
Our faces are toward France and the future. If there 
was ever any doubt as to duty or opportunity there is 
certainly none now. Germany's only hope is that we 
shall falter, but we will not falter. 

Let there be no thought that a great army will not be 
needed. The way to strike terror to the German heart, 
to make it realize the inevitableness of defeat, is for the 
United States to rush its preparations on a scale adequate 
to victory. Let us have a comprehensive industrial plan 
to insure needed direction of industrial effort, for we can- 
not otherwise provide the fighting men. 

It is not the measure of our high calling to gather a 
force merely to hold a line of trenches. A peace with 
the German Army on the soil of France, with Germany 
temporarily exhausted but not beaten, cannot be lasting. 
A peace with Germany, leaving the German Empire 
through ill-gotten gains stronger relatively than when it 
entered the war, with a national consciousness that its 
policy of brutality, of disregard of treaties, of vast military 



102 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

preparation, has won a larger international opportu- 
nity, would be nothing but a German peace, whatever 
concessions might be made in the West. It is for America, 
by supplying an adequate ntimber of fighting men, to 
make the victory decisive ; to see that there is no faltering 
until this great duty to humanity is fully performed and 
the banner of a new international order, secure in the 
common sense of justice, waves over a world untroubled 
by insane dreams of arbitrary power. 

GIVE US MEN! 

THE BISHOP OF EXETER 

Give us men ! 
Men from every rank, 
Fresh and free and frank; 
Men of thought and reading. 
Men of light and leading. 
Men of loyal breeding. 
The Nation's welfare speeding; 
Men of faith and not of faction 
Men of lofty aim and action : 
Give us men — I say again, 

Give us men ! 

Give us men ! 
Strong and stalwart ones; 
Men whom highest hope inspires, 
Men whom purest honor fires. 
Men who trample self beneath them, 
Men who make their country wreathe them 
As her noble sons, 



BE STRONG - 103 

Worthy of their sires ; 
Men who never shame their mothers, 
Men who never fail their brothers, 
True, however false are others; 
Give us men — I say again, 
Give us men ! 

BE STRONG 

MALTBIE DAVENPORT BABCOCK 

Be strong! 

We are not here to play, to dream, to drift. 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
Shun not the struggle; face it. 'T is God's gift. 

Be strong! 

Say not the days are evil,— who's to blame?— 
And fold the hands and acquiesce — shame! 
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name. 

Be strong ! 

It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong, 
How hard the battle goes, the days how long. 
Faint not, fight on ! To-morrow brings the song. 



THE MEN AT THE FRONT 

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 

It is incredible the devotion, the valor, and the endur- 
ance of these gallant men at the front. They have given 
courage a new meaning; they have given it a new standard, 
a new rating. It means something different, something 
more than it ever meant before. We knew that amongst 
us we had a man here and a man there who had a heart of 
gold, and was capable of daring and enterprise, who had 
valor firing his soul; but that we had thousands, nay 
myriads of them, spread all over the land, in the highest 
and in the humblest homes — that is the revelation of this 
war — a treasure, an inexhaustible treasure, hidden in the 
heart of the humblest man, of patriotism, consecration, 
courage, devotion, exalted attachment to ideals, and 
readiness of sacrifice for a great purpose. We had thought 
these qualities were qualities of the select, but they are 
all great, they are all select. It is a nation of heroes. If 
we can do such things in war we can also do them in peace. 
Peace has its sacrifices; peace demands valor; peace de- 
mands devotion; and it will be an unutterable insanity if 
the lesson which this war has taught us of the possibilities 
of our people in unity, in sacrifice for a common end, in 
devotion to the cause of a common humanity and of our 
common country, should be lost when the flag has been 
brought back triumphant from the field of battle and 
planted on the field of labor and of toil. 

104 



THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS 105 

THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS 

WINIFRED M. LETTS 

I saw the Connaught Rangers when they were passing by, 
On a spring day, a good day, with gold rifts in the sky. 
Themselves were marching steadily along the Liffey quay 
An' I see the young proud look of them as if it was 

to-day ! 
The bright lads, the right lads, I have them in my 

mind, 
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in 

the wind! 

A last look at old Ireland, a last good-bye maybe. 
Then the gray sea, the wide sea, my grief upon the sea ! 
And when will they come home, says I, when will they see 

once more 
The dear blue hills of Wicklow and Wexford's dim gray 

shore ? 
The brave lads of Ireland, no better lads you'll find 
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in 

the wind ! 

Three years have passed since that spring day, sad years 

for them and me. 
Green graves there are in Serbia and in Gallipoli, 
And many who went by that day along the muddy street 
Will never hear the roadway ring to their triumphant feet. 
But when they march before him, God's welcome will be 

kind. 
And the green flags on their bayonets will flutter in the 

wind. 



io6 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

"BADDEST BOY" 

People said; yes, people said 

That the baddest boy in town 
Was a kid, a freckled kid, 

By the name of Willie Brown. 
He disappeared; people sneered. 

And guessed it, with a frown — 
"Gone to enlist — he won't be missed — 

Why, he 's the baddest boy in town ! 

Baddest boy! 
I saw him marching — 
Marching 

Down the avenue ! 
With a step so free and easy. 
And his eyes so bright and blue ! 

Baddest boy! 
Some one was watching — 
Watching 

Willie Brown! 
And I knew that she was praying for 
The baddest boy in town ! 

People say the other day 

Came a message to our town. 
They read it out — it was about 

Private William Brown. 
The message said that he was dead — 

In action he went down. 
And people say he saved the day — 

The_^baddest boy in town 1 



"BADDEST BOY" 107 

Baddest boy ! 
I saw him marching — 
Marching 

Down the avenue ! 
Behind the colors of his regiment 
And the old red, white and blue ! 

Baddest boy! 
Some one was watching — 
Watching 

Willie Brown! 
And I know that she '11 be mourning for 
The baddest boy in town ! 



FLAG-DAY ADDRESS i 

WOODROW WILSON 

My Fellow-citizens: 

We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which 
we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our 
unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. 
It has no other character than that which we ^ive it from 
generation to generation. The choices are ours. It 
floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute 
those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, 
though silent, it speaks to us — speaks to us of the past, of 
the men and women who went before us and of the records 
they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; 
and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great his- 
tory, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a 
great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are 
about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw 
the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, 
hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men — 
the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation — 
to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away — 
for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For some- 
thing for which it has never sought the fire before? 
American armies were never before sent across the seas. 
Why are they sent now? For some new purpose for 
which this great flag has never been carried before, or for 
some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen 
men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which 
Americans have borne arms since the Revolution? 



1 From a speech delivered June 14, 1917. 

108 



FLAG-DAY ADDRESS 109 

These are questions which must be answered. We are 
Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve 
her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as 
she has always used it. We are accountable at the bar 
of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose 
it is we seek to serve. 

It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. 
The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial 
German Government left us no self-respecting choice but 
to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people 
and of our honor as a soyereign Government. The mili- 
tary masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. 
They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious 
spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion 
of our people in their own behalf. When they found that 
they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedi- 
tion amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from 
their allegiance; and some of- those agents were men 
connected with the official embassy of the German Gov- 
ernment itself here in our own capital. 

They sought by violence to destroy our industries and 
arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to 
take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile 
alliance with her; and that, not by indirection, but by 
direct suggestion from the foreign office in Berlin. They 
impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeat- 
edly executed their threat that they would send to their 
death any of our people who ventured to approach the 
coasts of Europe. 

But that is only part of the story. We know now as 
clearly as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that 
we are not the enemies of the German people and that 



no THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

they are not our enemies. They did not originate or 
desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn 
into it ; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting 
their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our 
own. 

They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister 
power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out 
and drawn blood from us. The whole world is at war 
because the whole world is in the grip of that power and 
is trying out the great battle which shall determine 
whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling 
itself free. 

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. 
Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in 
our way in this day of high resolution, when every prin- 
ciple we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure 
for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead 
at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster. 
Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes 
the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory 
shall shine in the face of our people. 

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, 

What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleam- 
ing, 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro* the perilous 
fight, 
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly stream- 
ing? 



THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER in 

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
Gave proof thro' the night that oiir flag was still there. 
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? 

On the shore dimly seen through the mist of the deep, 
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes. 

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep. 
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? 

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam. 

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream: 

'Tis the star-spangled banner! oh, long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, 
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, 

A home and a country should leave us no more? 

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' 
pollution. 

No refuge could save the hireling and slave 

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave : 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 

Between their loved homes and wild war's desolation; 

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued 
land 
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a 
nation ! 

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 

And this be our niotto: "In God is our trust." 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 



112 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

MAKERS OF THE FLAG 

FRANKLIN K. LANE 

This morning, as I passed into the Land Office, The 
Flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its 
rippling folds I heard it say: "Good morning, Mr. Flag 
Maker." 

"I beg your pardon, Old Glory," I said, "aren't you 
mistaken? I am not the President of the United States, 
nor a member of Congress, nor even a general in the army. 
I am only a Government clerk." 

"I greet you again, Mr. Flag Maker," replied the gay 
voice. "I know you well. You are the man who worked 
in the swelter of yesterday straightening out the tangle of 
that farmer's homestead in Idaho, or perhaps you found 
the mistake in that Indian contract in Oklahoma, or 
helped to clear that patent for the hopeful inventor in 
New York, or pushed the opening of that new ditch in 
Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, or 
brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No matter; 
whichever one of these beneficent individuals you may 
happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag Maker." 

I was about to pass on, when The Flag stopped me with 
these words : 

"Yesterday the President spoke a word that made 
happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico; but 
that act looms no larger on the flag than the struggle which 
the boy in Georgia is making to win the Com Club prize 
this stimmer. 

"Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open 
the door of Alaska; but a mother in Michigan worked 
from sunrise until far into the night, to give her boy an 
education. She, too, is making the flag. 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Franklin K. Lane 



MAKERS OF THE FLAG 113 

"Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial 
panics, and yesterday, maybe, a school teacher in Ohio 
taught his first letters to a boy who will one day write a 
song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. We 
are all making the flag." 

"But," I said impatiently, "these people were only 
working!" 

Then came a great shout from The Flag: 

"The work that we do is the making of the flag. 

"I am not the flag; not at all. I am but its shadow. 

"I am whatever you make me, nothing more. 

"I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a 
People may become. 

"I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of 
heartbreaks and tired muscles. 

"Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an 
honest work, fitting the rails together truly. 

"Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from 
me, and cynically I play the coward. 

"Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that ego that 
blasts judgment. 

"But always, I am all that you hope to be, and have 
the courage to try for. 

"I am song and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling 
hope. 

"I am the day's work of the weakest man, and the 
largest dream of the most daring. 

" I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and the 
statute makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and 
street sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. 

"I am the battle of yesterday, and the mistake of to- 
morrow. 
9 



114 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

" I am the mystery of the men who do without knowing 
why. 

"I am the clutch of an idea, and the reasoned purpose 
of resolution. 

"I am no more than what you believe me to be and I 
am all that you believe I can be. 

" I am what you make me, nothing more. 

"I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a 
symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big 
thing which makes this nation. My stars and my stripes 
are your dream and your labors. They are bright with 
cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you 
have made them so out of your hearts. For you are the 
makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the 
making." 

THE FLAG 

EDITH M. THOMAS 

I walked at noon down Broadway, 

And east I turned at Wall, 
Crossed Nassau Street and William — 

Old Glory over all! — 
Did you not do the same to-day — 
And brush the sudden tear away f 

The hanging gardens — how they bloom 

Far up the builded canyon's gloom! 

There never was before a spring 

Of such a wondrous blossoming 

To make the eye and heart adore ! . . . 

How beautiful, how beautiful — 
How beautiful I never knew before ! 



FOLLOW THE FLAG 115 

The hanging gardens — Oh, how brave 
When on the Hfting wind they wave ! 
Nor flaw nor frost can work them wrong, 
Perennial is the stock, and strong — 
In hardihood 't was sown of yore ! . . . 

How beautiful, how beautiful — 
How beautiful I never knew before ! 

The hanging gardens — colors three 

Are all the raptured eye can see. 

No flower exotic here has place. 

But all are sprung of native race — 

The red, the white, the blue — not more . . . 

How beautiful, how beautiful — 
How beautiful I never knew before ! 

The hanging gardens — and how far 

May crimson band and candid star 

A looming throw in other skies 

O'er lands where kindred blooms shall rise 

From broadcast seed that Freedom bore . . . 

How beautiful, how beautiful — 
How beautiful I never knew before ! 



FOLLOW THE FLAG 

THEODORE MARBURG 

Follow the flag! 

By every fireside where live the love of country and the 
love of justice is heard a sigh of relief that our flag is not, 
after all, to be trampled in the mire. Now that it has been 
raised aloft, follow it. Follow it even to the battle front, 



ii6 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Follow the flag! 

It goes on a high mission. The land over which it flies 
inherited its spirit of freedom from a race which had prac- 
ticed Hberty for a thousand years. And the daughter 
paid back the debt to the mother. Her successful practice 
of free institutions caused the civic stature of the citizen 
in the mother-land to grow. It lit the torch of liberty in 
France. Then, moving abreast, these three lands of 
democracy imparted to it impetus so resistless that free- 
dom is sweeping victorious around the globe. To-day 
constitutional government is the rule, not the exception, 
in the world. Once more these three nations are together 
leading a great cause and this time as brothers in arms. 

Follow the flag! 

It goes on a world mission. If the high hope of our 
President is fulfilled, that flag will have new meaning. 
Just as the stars and stripes in it symbolized the union of 
free states in America, so now they may come to symbolize 
the beginnings of a union of nations, self-governing, and, 
because they are self-governing, making for good will and 
for justice. 

Follow the flag! 

It goes on a stern mission. Follow it, not for revenge, 
yet in anger — righteous anger against the bloody crew 
who, with criminal intent, have brought upon the world 
the greatest sum of human misery it has ever known in 
all its history. Follow it till that ugly company is put 
down and the very people themselves whom they have so 
grievously deceived and misled, by coming into liberty, 
will com© to bless that flag and kiss its gleaming folds. 



THE KID HAS GONE TO THE COLORS 117 

Follow the flag! 

Too long it has been absent from that Hne in France 
where once again an Attila has been stopped. It has 
been needed there, God knows! And yet, though not 
visible to the eye, it is and has been there from the begin- 
ning. It is there in the hearts of those fifty thousand 
American boys who saw their duty clear and moved 
up to it. Now at last it may be flung to the breeze in 
the front line, to be visible by day, and to remain at 
nightfall, like the blessings of a prayer fulfilled, in the 
consciousness of men. Follow it and take your stand 
beside the fifty thousand. 

Follow the flag! 



THE KID HAS GONE TO THE COLORS 

W. M. HERSCHELL 

The Kid has gone to the Colors 
And we don't know what to say; 
The Kid we have loved and cuddled 
Stepped out for the Flag to-day. 
We thought him a child, a baby, 
With never a care at all. 
But his country called him man-size, 
And the Kid has heard the call. 

He paused to watch the recruiting, 

Where, fired by the fife and drum, 

He bowed his head to Old Glory 

And thought that it whispered: "Come!" 



Ii8 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

The Kid, not being a slacker, 
Stood forth with patriot- joy 
To add his name to the roster — 
And God, we 're proud of the boy ! 

The Kid has gone to the Colors; 
It seems but a little while 
Since he drilled a school boy army 
In a truly martial style. 
But now he's a man, a soldier. 
And we lend him listening ear, 
For his heart is a heart all loyal, 
Unscourged by the curse of fear. 

His dad, when he told him, shuddered ; 
His mother — God bless her! — cried; 
Yet, blest with a mother-nature, 
She wept with a mother-pride. 
But he whose old shoulders straightened 
Was Granddad — for memory ran 
To years when he, too, a youngster, 
Was changed by the Flag to a man ! 



PUTTING THE FLAG ON THE FIRING LINE ' 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

I come here tonight to appeal to the people of the great 
west, the people of the Mississippi valley, the people who 
are the spiritual heirs of the men who stood behind 
Lincoln and Grant. 

You men and women who live beside the Great Lakes 
and on the lands drained by the Ohio, the Mississippi, 
and the Missouri have always represented what is most 
intensely American in our national life. When once 
waked up to actual conditions you have always stood with 
unfaltering courage and iron endurance for the national 
honor and the national interest. 

I appeal to the sons and daughters of the men and 
women of the Civil War, to the grandsons and grand- 
daughters of the pioneers ; I appeal to the women as much 
as to the men, for our nation has risen level to every great 
crisis only because in every such crisis the courage of its 
women flamed as high as the courage of the men. 

I appeal to you to take the lead in making good the 
President's message, in which he set forth the reasons 
why it was our unescapable duty to make war upon 
Germany. It rests with us — with the American people 
— to make that message one of the great state documents 
of our history. 

Then let us steel our hearts and gird our loins to show 
that we are fit to stand among the free people whose free- 
dom is buttressed by their self-reliant strength. Let us 
show by our deeds that we are fit to be the heirs of the 

1 From the speech delivered in Chicago, April 28, 191 7. 

119 



120 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

men who founded the republic, and of the men who saved 
the repubHc; of the continentals who followed Washington, 
and of the men who wore the blue under Grant and the 
gray under Lee. 

But, mind you, the message, the speech, will amount to 
nothing unless we make it good ; and it can be made good 
only by the high valor of our fighting men, and by the 
resourceful and laborious energy of the men and women 
who, with deeds, not merely words, back up the fighting 
men. 

We read the Declaration of Independence every Fourth 
of July because — and only because — the soldiers of 
Washington made that message good by their blood during 
the weary years of war that followed. If, after wi'iting 
the Declaration of Independence, the men of '76 had 
failed with their bodies to make it good, it would be read 
now only with contempt and derision. 

Our children still learn how Patrick Henry spoke i or 
the heart of the American people when he said, "Give me 
liberty or give me death," but this generation is thrilled 
by his words only because the Americans of those days 
showed in very fact that they were ready to accept death 
rather than lose their liberty. 

In Lincoln's deathless Gettysburg speech and second 
inaugural he solemnly pledged the honor of the American 
people to the hard and perilous task of preserving the 
union and freeing the slaves. 

The pledge was kept. The American people fought to 
a finish the war which saved the union and freed the 
slave. If Lincoln and the men and women behind him 
had wavered, if they had grown fainthearted and had 
shrunk from the fight, or had merely paid others to fight 



FAME'S TRUE APPLAUSE 121 

for them, they would have earned for themselves and for 
us the scorn of the nations of mankind. 

The words of Lincoln will live forever only because they 
were made good by the deeds of the fighting men. 

So it is now. We can make the President's message of 
April 2nd stand among the great state papers in our his- 
tory ; but we can do so only if we make the message good ; 
and we can make it good only if we fight with all our 
strength now, at once ; if at the earliest possible moment 
we put the flag on the firing line and keep it there, over 
a constantly growing army, until the war closes by a peace 
which brings victory to the great cause of democracy and 
civiHzation, the great cause of justice and fair play among 
the peoples of the world. 

FAME'S TRUE APPLAUSE 

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

It cannot be that men who are the seed 

Of Washington should miss fame's true applause: 
Franklin did plan us; Marshall gave us laws; 

And slow the broad scroll grew a people's creed, — 

One land and free ! then at our dangerous need. 

Time's challenge coming, Lincoln gave it pause. 
Upheld the double pillars of the cause, 

And dying left them whole, — the crowning deed. 

Such was the fathering race that made all fast. 
Who founded us, and spread from sea to sea, 
A thousand leagues, the zone of liberty, 

And built for man this refuge from his past, 

Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered ; shamed were we, 

Failing the stature that such sires forecast. 



122 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

STAND BY THE FLAG 

Stand by the flag, its folds have streamed in glory, 

To foes a fear, to friends a festal robe. 
And spread in rhythmic lines the sacred story 

Of freedom's triumphs over all the globe ; 
Stand by the flag, on land, and ocean billow; 

By it your fathers stood, unmoved and true: 
Living, defended; dying, from their pillow. 

With their last blessing, pass'd it on to you. 

Stand by the flag, though death shots round it rattle ; 

And underneath its waving folds have met, 
In all the dread array of sanguine battle, 

The quivering lance and glittering bayonet ; 
Stand by the flag, all doubt and treason scorning. 

Believe, with courage firm and faith sublime, 
That it will float until the eternal morning 

Pales in its glories all the lights of time. 

THE CALL TO BATTLE 

GILBERT SHELDON 

If through the dust of conflict thou descry 
The shining of the standard of the Lord, 
Do thou arise and buckle on thy sword, 

And follow where it leads undoubtingly. 

Thou hast the Light : see that thou walk thereby ! 
Exceeding great and sure is his reward 
Whose purpose with his vision doth accord, 

And as his soul speaks so his acts reply. 



THE CALL TO BATTLE 123 

And if it shall be told thee that the foe ' 

Beholds the banner that thou deemst thine own 
March in his van to battle, be not wroth. 

The truth is other than the truths we know; 

His cause and thine are laid before the throne, 
And God inclines to neither and to both. 

— From The Nation 



THE WORLD SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 

England, France, Russia, Italy, and now the United 
States, as allies, are engaged in the greatest war of history 
to secure permanent world peace. With twenty or more 
millions of men at the colors, with losses in dead, wounded 
and captured of more than twenty-five per cent, with 
debts piling mountain-high and reaching many, many 
billions, they are fighting for a definite purpose, and 
that is the defeat of German militarism. 

If the Prussian military caste retains its power to con- 
trol the military and foreign policy of Germany after the 
war, peace will not be permanent, and war will begin again 
when the chauvinistic advisers of the HohenzoUem 
dynasty deem a conquest and victory possible. 

The Allies have made a stupendous effort and have 
strained their utmost capacity. Unready for the war, 
they have concentrated their energy in preparation. In 
this important respect they have defeated the plan of 
Germany "in shining armor" to crush her enemies in their 
unreadiness. 

But the war has not been won. Germany is in posses- 
sion of Belgium and part of northern France. She holds 
Serbia and Rumania, Poland and the Baltic Provinces of 
Russia. Peace now, even though it be made on the basis 
of the restoration of the status quo, "without indemnities 
and without annexations," would be a failure to achieve 
the great purpose for which the Allies have made heart- 
rending sacrifice. Armaments would continue for the 

124 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



William Howard Taft 



THE WORLD SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 125 

next war, and this war would have been fought in vain. 
The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of billions' 
worth of the product of men's labor would be wasted. 

He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not 
see the stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes 
the German military autocracy still to control the destinies 
of all of us as to peace or war. Those who favor perma- 
nent world peace must oppose with might and main the 
proposals for peace at this juncture in the war. 

The Allies are fighting for a principle the maintenance 
of which affects the future of civilization. If they do not 
achieve it they have sacrificed the flower of their youth 
and mortgaged their future for a century, and all for 
nothing. 

This is not a war in which the stake is territory' or the 
sphere of influence of one nation over another. The 
Allies cannot concede peace until they conquer it. When 
they do so, it will be permanent. Otherwise they fail. 

There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in 
which President Roosevelt properly and successfully inter- 
vened to bring about peace that helped the parties to a 
settlement. The principle at stake and the power and 
territory were of such a character that a settlement might 
be made substantially permanent. But the present issue 
is like that in our Civil War, which was whether the Union 
was to be preserved and the cancer of slavery was to be 
cut out. Peace proposals to President Lincoln were quite 
as numerous as those of to-day, and were moved by quite 
as high motives. But there was no compromise possible. 
Slavery and disunion either lost or won. So to-day the 
great moral object of the war must be achieved or defeated. 



126 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

TOGETHER 

ALFRED AUSTIN 

Who say we cherish far-off feud, 

Still nurse the ancient grudges ? 
Show me the title of this brood 

Of self-appointed judges ; 
Their name, their race, their nation, clan. 

And we will teach them whether 
We do not, as none others can, 

Feel, think, and work together! 

Both speak the tongue that Milton spoke, 

Shakespeare and Chatham wielded, 
And Washington and all his folk 

When their just claim was yielded. 
In it both lisp, both learn, both pray. 

Dirge death, and thus the tether 
Grows tighter, tenderer, every day, 

That binds the two together. 

Our ways are one, and one our aim, 

And one will be our story. 
Who fight for Freedom, not for fame. 

From Duty, not for glory ; 
Both stock of the old Home, where blow 

Shamrock, and rose, and heather. 
And every year link arms and go 

Through its loved haunts together. 

Should envious aliens plan and plot 
'Gainst one and now the other, 

They swift would learn how strong the knot 
Binds brother unto brother. 

How quickly they would change their tack 



PEACE 127 

And show the recreant feather, 
Should Star-and-Stripe and Union Jack 
But float mast-high together. 

Now let us give one hearty grip, 

As by true men is given, 
And vow eternal fellowship 

That never shall be riven ; 
And with our peaceful flags unfurled. 

Be fair or foul the weather, 
Should need arise, face all the world, 

And stand or fall together. 

PEACE 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
I love no peace which is not fellowship 

And which includes not mercy. I would have 
Rather the raking of the guns across 

The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave*. . . 

Such things are better than a Peace that sits 

Beside a hearth in self -commended mood. 
And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits 

Are howling out of doors against the good 
Of the poor wanderer. What! Your peace admits 

Of outside anguish while it keeps at home? 
I loathe to take its name upon my tongue. 

'T is nowise peace : 't is treason, stiff with doom — 
This gagged despair and inarticulate wrong. . . . 

O Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness, 
Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief, 

Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress, 
And give us peace which is no counterfeit ! 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM 

The Government is our Government. We have made 
it. The President represents the votes of a majority of 
his fellow citizens. The Congressmen are the men we 
have selected for our national councils. We ourselves are 
responsible for the policy of the Republic. We owe it to 
ourselves as well as to the State to repress with promptness 
all injustice and to maintain law and order. 

The Germany I knew as a student, the good old Ger- 
many, the Germany of ideals, for which Germany fought 
in 1848 — the ideals of Goethe, Lessing, Komer, Richter, 
and other thinkers and fighters for freedom — has been 
poisoned by the fumes of prussic acid from Berlin. One 
result of this war must be to cleanse Germany from this 
Prussian poison. 

We came into this war very late. Our responsibility 
is therefore graver. Under the pressure of war our people 
have been brought together. We see the evolution of a 
nation's soul. We go into this war with Lincoln's motto: 
"Let us have faith that right makes might and in that 
faith let us do our duty as we understand it." 

The world's war has now resolved itself into an issue of 
will power. The people who are fighting for the liberty 
of the world must be able to show an assured purpose 
and conviction and to back up that conviction with action 
in such fashion that the forces which have attempted to 
secure the domination of Europe and the world shall be 
driven back. It is clear that they have already failed in 
their original purpose. They must be so overcome that 

128 




George Haven Putnam 



THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP 129 

a repetition of a war of aggression shall be impossible. 
This struggle is a war against war, and it must be so con- 
tinued that we shall have at the completion an assured 
peace, a peace with justice, a peace that will maintain 
throughout the world the right of men to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. 

THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP ^ 

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 

Thou, too, sail on, Ship of State ! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Himianity with all its fears, 
With all the hopes of future years. 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
We know what Master laid thy keel. 
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
'T is but the flapping of the sail. 
And not a rent made by the gale ! 
In spite of rock and tempest's roar. 
In spite of false lights on the shore. 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!. 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
Oiu: hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
Our faith triimiphant o'er our fears. 
Are all with thee — are all with thee! 

10 



130 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

IT IS TIME 

It is time ! Come, all together, come ! 

Not to the fife's call, not to the drum; 

Right needs you; Truth claims you — 

That 's a call indeed 

One must heed ! 

Not for the weeping 

(God knows there is weeping !) ; 

Not for the horrors 

That are blotting out the page ; 

Not for our comrades 

(How many now are sleeping !) 

Nor for the pity nor the rage, 

But for the sake of simple goodness 

And His laws. 

We shall sacrifice our all 

For The Cause! 

— From Lloyd Roberts' "Come Quietly, Britain!" 

A SIMPLE SONG FOR AMERICA 

KARLE WILSON BAKER 

Gather us to thy heart, 

Lay us thy spirit bare : 
Give us in thee our part, 

O Mother young and fair ! 

Thou art so great, so great. 

Thy children are so small. 
We cannot guess thy state 

Nor compass thee at all. 



A SIMPLE SONG FOR AMERICA 131 

Our spirits yearn and ache 

To forge from these few years, 
What soberer peoples make 
From centuries of tears : 

Love, like a tempered sword, 

Glittering forth at need ! 
We can but pray the Lord 

Who knows nor church nor creed, 

The Day-spring from above. 

The Truth that maketh free : 
Give us great hearts to love 

A great land worthily! 



OUR MORAL LEADERSHIP! 

EDMUND J. JAMES~ 

We are gathered here, not so much to review what we 
have done or failed to do in the Great War during the 
past year, as to dedicate ourselves anew to the great 
enterprise that we have undertaken. 

In spite of all that has been said during the year in which 
we have been at war with the Central Powers of Europe, 
sustaining and helping our hard-pressed and courageous 
Allies, it does not seem to me that the average American 
citizen even yet realizes what a fundamental world issue 
is involved; how great is our privilege in being permitted 
to enter this conflict actively and on the right side; how 
important a turning point in the history of the world 
the outcome of this war may be; and how fortunate we 
are in having a president who has seized the opportunity 
to convert what to a narrow observer seemed a mere 
struggle for additional territory and additional material 
resources into a great issue in the progress of human 
freedom. 

When Louis XVI called together the Estates General 
in the year 1789 to take counsel as to the state of the 
kingdom, a struggle arose between the king and the repre- 
sentatives of the various orders, which might easily have 
remained a mere local incident in the life of a single 
nation. But the genius of the French people converted 
it into a great crusade for liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
out of which grew that mighty convulsion, called simply 

1 From the speech delivered April, 191 8. 

132 




Edmund Janes James 



OUR MORAL LEADERSHIP 133 

"The Revolution," so fundamental in its characteristics 
and results, so sweeping in its wide-spread influence, that 
all previous human history seemed a mere preparation 
for it and all subsequent history a mere outcome of it ; all 
previous lines of development seeming to converge toward 
it and all subsequent lines of progress to spring out of it. 

The present war at first was regarded by some as a mere 
contest on the part of great nations for more territory 
and a larger population and- greater wealth. It was 
natural to judge from previous human experiences that 
smaller powers standing in the way of the waves of this 
furious struggle for national supremacy would be swept 
away, devastated, ruined, utterly effaced perhaps — and 
that all this would happen as so inevitably a result of the 
conflict of great powers that while much sympathy might 
be felt or even expressed, the only active result would be a 
shrugging of the shoulders and an "alas! alas! Such is 
life. Such is the fate of the small man! and the small 
nation!" 

And then the conduct of the Central Powers became 
such that even those Americans who did not appreciate 
or care for a moral role among the nations for the Great 
Republic saw themselves constrained to force action in 
order to defend our national independence, nay, our 
national existence. 

Even then the issue might have been narrowed and 
might have been formulated as a selfish one, affecting 
ourselves alone or the particular desires of national units, 
such as the securing to Italy of the territory it desired at 
the expense of Austria, or the giving to Russia of the 
right to determine the eastern boundaries of Germany, 
while to France and England should be given a similar 



134 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

privilege as to the western boundaries, and the assign- 
ment to England of the German Colonies — a kind of 
dispute in which the American people could have little 
personal interest except so far as it safeguarded or threat- 
ened our power or security. 

With one noble and sweeping gesture President Wilson 
wiped out all these items on the slate of world division 
and organization and wrote down as our goal the safe- 
guarding of human liberty throughout the earth: to all 
people — not merely to ourselves — to the small as well 
as to the great — to the weak as well as to the strong — 
the assurance that they may order their own lives as 
freemen. 

The stars in their courses are fighting for us and our 
cause, and if only we are true to the high ideals we have 
adopted, and show ourselves worthy of our ancestry — 
in energy, in perseverance, in skill, and in devotion — the 
victory, an overwhelming victory will be ours. 

A victory for us means victory for the forces of right- 
eousness and of progress; protection for the small nation 
and the small man, for women and children. It means 
LIBERTY and FREEDOM for all! 

"OH MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE" 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones. 
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. 
They do not know how loved thou art, 
How many a fond and fearless heart 

Would rise to throw 
Its life between thee and the foe. 



"OH MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE" 135 

They know not, in their hate and pride, 
What virtues with thy children bide ; 
How true, how good, thy graceful maids 
Make bright, like flowers, the valley-shades; 

What generous men 
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen; — 

What cordial welcomes greet the guest 
By thy lone rivers of the West ; 
How faith is kept, and truth revered, 
And man is loved and God is feared, 

In woodland homes. 
And where the ocean border foams. 

There 's freedom at thy gates, and rest • 

For earth's down-trodden and opprest, 

A shelter for the hunted head. 

For the starved laborer toil and bread. 

Power, at thy bounds. 
Stops and calls back his baffled hounds. 

Oh, fair young mother! on thy brow 
Shall sit a nobler grace than now. 
Deep in the brightness of the skies 
The thronging years in glory rise, 

• And, as they fleet, 
Drop strength and riches at thy feet. 



136 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

ON PATROL 

He went to sea on the long patrol, 
Away to the East from the Gorton Shoal, 

But now he 's overdue. 
He signaled me as he bore away 
A flickering lamp through leaping spray. 
And darkness then till judgment day, 

* ' So long ! Good luck to you ! ' ' 

He 's waiting out on the long patrol, 

Till the names are called at the muster-roll 

Of seamen overdue. 
Far above him, in wind and rain, 
Another is on patrol again — 
The gap is closed in the Naval Ghain 

Where all the links are new. 

Over his head the seas are white, 

And the wind is blowing a gale to-night. 

As if the Storm-King knew. 
And roared a ballad of sleet and snow 
To the man that lies on the sand below, 
A trumpet-song for the winds to blow 

To seamen overdue. 

Was it sudden or slow — the death that came? 
Roaring water or sheets of flame? 

The end with none to view? 
No man can tell us the way he died, 
But over the clouds Valkyries ride 
To open the gates and hold them wide 

For seamen overdue. 



ON PATROL 137 

But whether the end was swift or slow, 
By the Hand of God, or a German blow, 

My messmate overdue — 
You went to Death — and the whisper ran 
As over the Gates the horns began 
Splendor of God! We have found a man. 

Goodbye ! Good luck to you ! 

— From Blackwood's Magazine 



ENGLAND UNSHEATHES THE SWORD ^ 

HERBERT H. ASQUITH 

My Lord Mayor and Citizens of London: 

It is three and a half years since I last had the honor of 
addressing in this hall a gathering of the citizens. We 
were then met under the Presidency of one of your pred- 
ecessors, men of all creeds and parties, to celebrate and 
approve the joint declaration of the two great English- 
speaking States that for the future any differences between 
them should be settled, if not by agreement, at least by 
judicial inquiry and arbitration, and never in any circum- 
stances by war. Those of us who hailed that great 
Eirenicon between the United States and ourselves as a 
landmark on the road of progress were not sanguine 
enough to think, or even to hope, that the era of war 
was drawing to a close. But still less were we prepared 
to anticipate the terrible spectacle which now confronts 
us of a contest which for the number and importance of 
the powers engaged, the scale of their armaments and 
armies, the width of the theater of conflict, the outpouring 
of blood and the loss of life, the incalculable toll of suffer- 
ing levied upon non-combatants, the material and moral 
loss accumulating day by day to the higher interests of 
civilized mankind — a contest which in every one of these 
aspects is without precedent in the annals of the world. 
We were very confident three years ago in the rightness of 
our position, when we welcomed the new securities for 
peace. We are equally confident in it today, when reluc- 
tantly, and against our will, but with a clear judgment 

1 Delivered September 5, 1914. 

138 



ENGLAND UNSHEATHES THE SWORD 139 

and a clean conscience we find ourselves involved with 
the whole strength of this empire in a bloody arbitra- 
tion between might and right. The issue has passed 
out of the domain of argument into another field, but let 
me ask you, and through you the world outside, what 
would have been our condition as a nation today if we 
had been base enough through timidity or through per- 
verted calculation of self-interest, or through a paralysis 
of the sense of honor and duty, if we had been base enough 
to be false to our word and faithless to our friends? 

Otir eyes would have been turned at this moment with 
those of the whole civilized world to Belgium, a small 
State, which has lived for more than seventy years under 
the several and collective guarantee to which we in com- 
mon with Prussia and Austria were parties, and we should 
have seen at the instance and by the action of two of these 
guaranteeing powers her neutrality violated, her inde- 
pendence strangled, her territory made use of as afford- 
ing the easiest and the most convenient road to a war of 
unprovoked aggression against France. We, the British 
people, would at this moment have been standing by with 
folded arms and with such countenance as we could com- 
mand while this small and unprotected State, in defense 
of her vital liberties, made a heroic stand against over- 
weening and overwhelming force; we should have been 
admiring as detached spectators the siege of Liege, the 
steady and manful resistance of a small army to the 
occupation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and 
memories, the gradual forcing back of the patriotic de- 
fenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp, 
countless outrages inflicted by buccaneering levies exacted 
from the vmoffending civil population, and, finally, the 



140 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

greatest crime committed against civilization and culture 
since the Thirty Years' War, the sack of Louvain, with 
its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivaled 
associations — a shameless holocaust of priceless treasures 
lit by blind barbarian vengeance. What account should 
we, the Government and the people of this country, 
have been able to render to the tribunal of our national 
conscience and sense of honor, if, in defiance of our plighted 
and solemn obligations, we had endured, nay, if we had 
not done our best to prevent, yes, and to avenge these 
intolerable outrages? For my part I say that sooner than 
be a silent witness — which means in effect a willing 
accomplice — of this tragic triumph of force over law and 
of brutality over freedom, I would see this country of 
ours blotted out of the pages of history. 

THE CALL 

R. E. VERNEDE 

Lad, with the merry smile and the eyes 

Quick as a hawk's and clear as the day. 
You, who have counted the game the prize. 

Here is the game of games to play. 

Never a goal — the captains say — 
Matches the one that 's needed now: 

Put the old blazer and cap away — 
England's colors await your brow. 

Man, with the square-set jaws and chin, 
Always, it seems, you have moved to your end 

Sure of yourself, intent to win 

Fame and wealth and the power to bend. 



THE CALL 141 

All that you ' ve made you 're called to spend, 
All that you ' ve sought you 're asked to miss ; 

What's ambition compared with this — 
That a man lay down his life for his friend ? 

Dreamer, oft in your glancing mind 

Brave with drinking the faerie brew, 
You have smitten the ogres blind 

When the fair Princess cried out to you. 

Dreamer, what if your dreams are true? 
Yonder 's a bayonet, magical, since 

Him whom it strikes, the blade sinks through — 
Take it and strike for England, Prince ! 

Friend with the face so hard and worn. 
The Devil and you have sometime met, 

And now you curse the day you were bom 
And want one boon of God — to forget. 
Ah, but I know, and yet — and yet — 

I think, out there in the shrapnel spray, 
You shall stand up and not regret 

The Life that gave so splendid a day. 

Lover of ease, you 've lolled and forgot 

All the things that you meant to right ; 
Life has been soft for you, has it not? 

What offer does England make to-night ? 

This — to toil and to march and to fight 
As never you've dreamed since your life began; 

This — to carry the steel-swept height, 
This — to know that you ' ve played the man ! 



142 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Brothers, brothers, the time is short, 

Nor soon again shall it so betide 
That a man may pass from the common sort 

Sudden and stand by the heroes' side. 

Are there some that being named yet bide ? 
Hark once more to the clarion call — 

Sounded by him who deathless died — 
"This day England expects you all." 

AN INVOCATION 

BEATRICE BARRY 

That little children may in safety ride 

The strong, clean waters of Thy splendid seas ; 

That Anti-Christ be no more glorified, 

Nor mock Thy justice with his blasphemies, 

We come, but not with threats or braggart boasts. 
Hear us, Lord God of Hosts ! 

That Liberty be not betrayed and sold. 

And that her sons prove worthy of the breed ; 

That Freedom's flag may shelter as of old. 
Nor decorate the shrines of Gold and Greed, 

We come; and on our consecrated sword 
We ask Thy blessing, Lord. 

That honor be among those priceless things 
Without which life shall seem of little worth : 

That covenants be not the sport of kings; 
That freedom shall not perish from the earth, 

We come; across a scarred and bloodstained sod, 
Lead us, Almighty God ! 



THE SPIRES OF OXFORD 143 

THE SPIRES OF OXFORD 

WINIFRED M. LETTS 

I saw the spires of Oxford 

As I was passing by, 
The gray spires of Oxford 

Against the pearl-gray sky. 
My heart was with the Oxford men 

Who went abroad to die. 

The years go fast in Oxford, 

The golden years and gay. 
The hoary Colleges look down 

On careless boys at play. 
But when the bugles sounded war 

They put their games away. 

They left the peaceful river, 

The cricket-field, the quad, 
The shaven lawns of Oxford, 

To seek a bloody sod — 
They gave their merry youth away 

For country and for God. 

God rest you, happy gentlemen, 

Who laid your good lives down, 
Who took the khaki and the gun 

Instead of cap and gown. 
God bring you a fairer place 

Than even Oxford town. 



TO THE ARMY! 

Soldiers: 

Without the least provocation on our part, a neighbor, 
glorying in his power, has torn into shreds the treaties 
that bear his signature and violated the territory of our 
fathers. 

Because we have been worthy of ourselves, because we 
have refused to forfeit our honor, he has attacked us. 
But the whole world is amazed at our loyal stand. May 
its respect and its esteem sustain you in this supreme 
moment ! 

Seeing its freedom menaced, the nation has been deeply 
moved and her children have hurried to her frontiers. 
Valiant soldiers of a sacred cause, I have confidence in 
your tenacious bravery, and I salute you in the name of 
Belgium. Your citizens are proud of you. You will 
triimiph, for yours is the might that serves the right. 

Caesar said of your ancestors: "Of all the peoples of 
Gaul the Belgians are the bravest." 

Hail to you, army of the Belgian people! In the face 
of the enemy, remember that you are fighting for liberty 
and for your menaced hearths. Remember, men of 
Flanders, the Battle of the Golden Spurs; and you, Wal- 
lons, who now stand on your honor, remember the six 
hundred Franchimontois. 

Soldiers! I leave Brussels to put myself at your head. 

Albert. 

Done at the Palace of Brussels, this fifth day of August, 
1914. 

144 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

King Albert 



THE PRAYER 145 

Shy and smiling midst his soldiers 

Like some young father 'mongst big sons, 

In the cold and through the gloom, 

The King moves along the trenches 

Speaking little, quietly and slow : 

" Patience, all is well, work on!" 

A handclasp and a look, then he is gone 

And those who could not see his face 

Take comfort that they heard his passing step. 

— From Emile Cammaerts' "The King and the Emperor" 

THE PRAYER 

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 
[The real experience of a French gunner] 
You say there 's only evil in this war — 
That bullets drive out Christ ? If you had been 
In Fumes with me that night — what would you say, 
I wonder? 

It was ruin past all words, 
Horror where joyous comfort used to be. 
And not clean quiet death, for all day long 
The great shells tore the little that remained 
Like vulttures on a body that still breathes. 
They stopped as it grew dark. I looked about 
The ghastly wilderness that once had been 
The village street, and saw no other life 
Except a Belgian soldier, shadowy 
Among the shadows, and a little group 
Of children creeping from a cellar school 
And hurrying home. One older than the rest — 
So little older! — mothered them along 
11 



146 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Till all at once a stray belated shell 

Whined suddenly out of the gloom, and burst 

Near by. The babies wailed and clung together, 

Helpless with fear. In vain the little mother 

Encouraged them — ' * But no ! You must n't cry, 

That is n't brave, that is n't French ! " At last 

She led her frightened brood across the way 

To where there stood a roadside Calvary 

Bearing its sad, indomitable Christ — 

Strange how the shells will spare just that! I saw 

So many . . . There they knelt, poor innocents, 

Hands folded and eyes closed. I stole across 

And stood behind them. ** We must say our prayer - 

Our Father which art in heaven," she began. 

And all the little sobbing voices piped, 

"Hallowed be Thy Name."' From down the road 

The Belgian soldier had come near. I felt 

Him standing there beside me in the dusk. 

' ' Thy kingdom come — ' ' 

"Thy will be done on earth 
As it is in heaven." The irony of it 
Cut me like steel. I barely kept an oath 
Behind my teeth. If one could name this earth 
In the same breath with heaven — what is hell ? 
Only a little child could pray like this. 
" Give us this day our daily bread — " A pause. 
There was no answer. She repeated it 
Urgently. Still the hush. She opened wide 
Reproachful eyes at them. Their eyes were open 
Also, and staring at the shadowy shapes 
Of ruin all around them. Now that prayer 
Had grown too hard even for little children. 



IN FLANDERS FIELDS 147 

**I know — I know — but we must say the prayer," 
She faltered. "Give us this day our daily bread, 
And — and forgive — " she stopped. 

"Our trespasses 
As we forgive them who have trespassed against us." 
The children turned amazed, to see who spoke 
The words they could not. I too turned to him, 
The soldier there beside me — and I looked 
Into King Albert's face ... I have no words 
To tell you what I saw . . . only I thought 
That while a man's breast holds a heart like that, 
Christ was not — even here — so far away. 

IN FLANDERS FIELDS 

JOHN McCRAE 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow 

Between the crosses, row on row, 

That mark our place, and in the sky. 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 

Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the dead; short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe ! 
To you from failing hands we throw 

The torch ; be yours to hold it high ! 

If ye break faith with us who die 

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 

In Flanders fields. 

— From Punch 



148 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

BELGIUM SHALL RISE' 

CARDINAL MERCIER 

My dearest brethren, I desire to utter, in your name and 
my own, the gratitude of those whose age, vocation, and 
social conditions cause them to benefit by the heroism 
of others, without bearing in it any active part. 

If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from 
fire, you would assuredly hold yourselves bound to him 
by a debt of everlasting thankfulness. But it is not one 
man, it is two hundred and fifty thousand men, who 
fought, who suffered, who fell for you, so that Belgium 
might keep her independence, her dynasty, her patriotic 
unity; so that after the vicissitudes of battle she might 
rise nobler, purer, more erect, and more glorious than 
before. 

In your name I sent them the greeting of our fraternal 
sympathy and our assurance that not only do we pray 
for the success of their arms and for the eternal welfare 
of their souls, but that we also accept for their sake all 
the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our 
own share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all 
that the future may have in store for us, in himiiliation 
for a time, in anxiety, and in sorrow. In the days of 
final victory we shall be in honor; it is just that today we 
should all be in grief. 

Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural instinct 
rebels against the evils that have fallen upon Belgium; 
the spontaneous thought of mankind is ever that virtue 
should have its instantaneous crown, and injustice its 
immediate retribution. But the ways of God are not our 

^ Extract from the famous pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier, 
December 25, 1914. 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Cardinal Mercier 



BELGIUM SHALL RISE 149 

ways. Providence gives free way, for a time measured 
by divine wisdom, to himian passions and the conflict of 
desires. God, being eternal, is patient. The last word 
is the word of mercy, and it belongs to those who believe 
in love. 

Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what 
our country has undergone. These four last months have 
seemed to me age-long. By thousands have oiu* brave 
ones been mown down; wives, mothers, are weeping for 
those they shall never see again; hearths are desolate; dire 
poverty spreads; anguish increases. I have traversed the 
greater part of the districts most terribly devastated in 
my diocese; and the ruins I beheld were more dreadful 
than I, prepared by the saddest of forebodings, ccJuld 
have imagined. Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, 
convents, in great numbers, are in ruins. Entire villages 
have all but disappeared. 

In the dear city of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, 
the magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover 
its former splendor. The ancient college of St. Ives, 
the art schools, the consular and commercial schools of 
the University, the old markets, our rich library with its 
collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its 
archives, its galleries — all this accumulation of intel- 
lectual, of historic, of artistic riches, the fruits of the 
labor of five centuries — all is in the dust. 

Many a parish has lost its pastor. In my diocese 
alone I know that thirteen priests were put to death. 
Thousands of Belgian citizens have been deported to 
the prisons of Germany. Hundreds of innocent men have 
been shot or burned. We can neither number our dead 
nor complete the measure of our ruins. 



150 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

And there where Hves were, not taken, and there where 
the stones of buildings were not thrown down, what 
anguish unrevealed! Famihes, hitherto Hving at ease, 
now in bitter want; all commerce at an end; all careers 
ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands upon thou- 
sands of workingmen without employment; working- 
women, shop girls, humble servant girls, without the 
means of earning their bread ; and poor souls forlorn on the 
bed of sickness and fever, crying, "O Lord, how long, 
how long? " There is nothing to reply. The reply is the 
secret of God. 

Yes, dearest brethren, it is the secret of God. He is 
the master of events and the sovereign director of the 
human multitude. As for us, my brethren, we will adore 
Him in the integrity of our souls. Not yet do we see, in 
all its magnificence, the revelation of His wisdom, but our 
faith trusts Him with it all. Before His justice we are 
humble, and in His mercy hopeful. 

God will save Belgium, my brethren, you cannot doubt 
it. Nay, rather He is saving her. Across the smoke of 
conflagration, across the stream of blood, have you not 
glimpses, do you not perceive, signs of His love for us? 
Is there a patriot among us who does not know that 
Belgiimi has grown great? Nay, which of us would have 
the heart to cancel this last page in the national history? 
Which of us does not exult in the brightness of the glory 
of this shattered nation? When a mighty foreign power, 
confident in its own strength and defiant of the faith of 
treaties, dared to threaten us in our independence, then 
did all Belgians rise as one man. 

Belgium gave her word of honor to defend her inde- 
pendence. She kept her word. The other Powers had 



TO BELGIUM 151 

agreed to protect and to respect Belgian neutrality. 
Germany has broken her word; England has been faithful 
to it. These are the facts. We should have acted 
unworthily had we evaded our obligation. And now we 
would not rescind our first resolution; we exult in it. 
Being called upon to write a most solemn page in the 
history of our country, we resolved that it should be also 
a sincere, also a glorious page. And as long as we are 
compelled to give proof of endurance, so long we shall 
endure. 

Truce then, my brethren, to all murmurs of complaint. 
Not only to the Redeemer's example shall you look but 
also to the example of the thirty thousand, perhaps forty 
thousand, men who have already shed their life blood for 
their country. In comparison with them what have you 
endured who are deprived of the daily comforts of your 
lives? Let the patriotism of our army, the heroism of 
our King and of our beloved Queen, serve to stimulate us 
and support us. Let us bemoan ourselves no more. Let 
us deserve the coming deliverance. Let us hasten it by 
our prayers. Courage, brethren. Suffering passes away ; 
the crown of life for our souls, the crown of glory for our 
nation, shall not pass. 



TO BELGIUM 

EDEN PHILLPOTTS 
Champion of human honour, let us lave 

Your feet and bind your wounds on bended knee. 

Though coward hands have nailed you to the tree 
And shed your innocent blood and dug your grave, 



152 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Rejoice and live ! Your oriflamme shall wave - 
While man has power to perish and be free — 
A gold^i flame of holiest Liberty, 

Proud as the dawn and as the sunset brave. 

Belgium, where dwelleth reverence for right 
Enthroned above all ideals ; where your fate 

And your supernal patience and your might 
Most sacred grow in himian estimate, 

You shine a star above this stormy night. 
Little no more, but infinitely great. 

LIEGE 

WILLIAM WATSON 

Betwixt the foe and France was she, 
France the immortal, France the Free; 

The foe like one vast living sea 
Drew nigh. 

He dreamed that none his tide would stay, 
But when he bade her to make way, 

She, through her cannon, answered, "Nay, 
Not I." 

No tremor and no fear she showed; 

She held the pass, she barred the road 
While Death's unsleeping feet bestrode 

The ground. 

So long as deeds of noblest worth 

Are sung 'mid joy and tears and mirth. 

Her glory shall to the ends of earth 
Resound. 



LA BRABANgONNE I53 

Watched by a world that yearned to aid, 

Lonely she stood but undismayed, 
Resplendent was the part she played, 

And pure. 

Praised be her heroes, proud her sons; 

She threw her souls into the guns. 
Her name shall with the loveliest ones 

Endure. 



LA BRABANCONNE 

FLORENCE ATTENBOROUGH 

The years of slavery are past. 
The Belgian rejoices once more; 
Courage restores to him at last 
The rights he held of yore ! 

Strong and firm his clasp will be. 
Keeping the ancient flag unfurl'd 
To fling its message on the watchful world: 
For King, for Right, and Liberty! 

For thee, dear country, cherished motherland, 
Our songs and otir valour we give;. 
Never from thee our hearts are banned. 
For thee alone we live ! 

And thy years shall glorious be. 

Circled in Unity's embrace, 

Thy sons shall cherish thee in ev'ry place 

For King, for Right, and Liberty. 



THE FIGHTERS OF FRANCE ^ 

ANATOLE FRANCE 

Dear soldiers, dear fellow-citizens, I address you because 
I love you and honor you and think of you unceasingly. 

I am entitled to speak to you heart to heart because I 
have a right to speak for France, being one of those who 
have ever sought, in freedom of judgment and uprightness 
of conscience, the best means of making their country 
strong. I am entitled to speak to you because not having 
desired war, but being compelled to suffer it, I, like you, 
like all Frenchmen, am resolved to wage it till the end, 
until justice shall have conquered iniquity, civilization 
barbarism, and until the nations are delivered from the 
monstrous menace of an oppressive militarism. I have 
a right to speak to you because I am one of the few who 
have never deceived you, and who have never believed that 
you needed lies for the maintenance of your courage; 
one of the few who, rejecting as unworthy of you decep- 
tive fictions and misleading silence, have told you the 
truth. 

I told you in December last year: This war will be 
cruel and long. I tell you now: You have done 
much, but all is not yet over. The end of your labors 
approaches, but is not yet. You are fighting against an 
enemy fortified by long preparation and immense material. 
Your foe is unscrupulous. He has learned from his leaders 
that inhtmianity is the soldier's first virtue. Arming 
himself in a manner undreamed of hitherto by the most 

1 Extract from an article in Petit Parisien in 1915; translated by 
Winifred Stevens, editor of "The Book of France." 

154 



THE FIGHTERS OF FRANCE 155 

formidable of conquerors, he causes rivers of blood to 
flow and breathes forth vapors charged with torpor and 
with death. Endure, persevere, dare. Remain what 
you are, and none shall prevail against you. 

You are fighting for your native land, that laughing, 
fertile land, the most beautiful in the world; for your 
fields and your meadows. For the august mother, who, 
crowned with vine leaves and with ears of com, waits to 
welcome you and to feed you with all the inexhaustible 
treasures of her breast. You are fighting for your village 
belfry, your roofs of slate or tile, with wreaths of smoke 
curling up into the serene sky. For your fathers' graves, 
your children's cradles. 

You are fighting for our august cities, on the banks of 
whose rivers rise the monuments of generations — roman- 
esque churches, cathedrals, minsters, abbeys, palaces, 
triumphal arches, coltimns of bronze, theaters, museums, 
town halls, hospitals, statues of sages and of heroes — 
monuments whose walls, whether modest or magnificent, 
shelter alike commerce, industry, science, and the arts, 
all that constitutes the beauty of life. 

You are fighting for our moral heritage, our manners, 
our uses, our laws, our customs, our beliefs, our traditions. 
For the works of our sculptors, our architects, our painters, 
our engravers, our goldsmiths, our enamelers, our glass 
cutters, our weavers. For the songs of our musicians. 
For our mother tongue which, with ineffable sweetness, 
for eight centuries has flowed from the lips of our poets, 
our orators, our historians, our philosophers. For the 
knowledge of man and of nature. For that encyclopedic 
learning which attained among us the high- water mark of 
precision and lucidity. You are fighting for the genius 



156 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

of France, which enlightened the world and gave freedom 
to the nations. By this noble spirit bastiles are over- 
thrown. And, lastly, you are fighting for the homes of 
Belgians, English, Russians, Italians, Serbians, not for 
France merely, but for Europe, ceaselessly disturbed and 
furiously threatened by Germany's devouring ambition. 
The Fatherland ! Liberty ! Beloved children of France, 
these are the sacred treasures committed to your keep- 
ing; for their sakes you endure; for their sakes you will 
conquer. 

THE MARSEILLAISE 

ROUGET DE LISLE 

Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory ! 

Hark ! Hark ! what myriads bid you rise ! 
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary, 

Behold their tears and hear their cries ! 
Shall hateful tyrants, mischiefs breeding, 

With hireling hosts, a ruffian band. 

Affright and desolate the land. 
While peace and liberty lie bleeding? 

To arms ! to arms, ye brave ! 

The avenging sword unsheathe ! 
March on ! march on ! all hearts resolved 

On victory or death! 

Now, now the dangerous storm is rolling, 
Which treacherous kings, confederate, raise; 

The dogs of war, let loose, are howling. 
And lo! our fields and cities blaze; 

And shall we basely view the ruin. 
While lawless force, with guilty stride, 



YOUR LAD' AND MY LAD 157 

Spreads desolation far and wide, 
With crimes and blood his hands imbruing ! 

To arms ! to arms, ye brave ! 

The avenging sword unsheathe ! 
March on! march on! all hearts resolved 

On victory or death ! 

With luxury and pride surrounded, 

The vile, insatiate despots dare. 
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded, 

To meet and vend the light and air; 
Like beasts of burden would they load us. 

Like gods would bid their slaves adore ; 

But man is man, and who is more? 
Then, shall they longer lash and goad us ? 

To arms ! to arms, ye brave ! 

The avenging sword unsheathe ! 
March on ! march on ! all hearts resolved 

On victory or death! 

YOUR LAD, AND MY LAD 

RANDALL PARRISH 

Down toward the deep-blue water, marching to throb of 

drum. 
From city street and country lane the lines of khaki come ; 
The rumbling gims, the sturdy tread, are full of grim 

appeal, 
While rays of western sunshine flash back from burnished 

steel. 
With eager eyes and cheeks aflame the serried ranks 

advance; 
And your dear lad, and my dear lad, are on their way to 

France. 



158 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

A sob clings choking in the throat, as file on file sweep by, 
Between those cheering multitudes, to where the great 
ships lie ; 

The batteries halt, the columns wheel, to clear-toned 
bugle-call, 

With shoulders squared and faces front they stand a 
khaki wall. 

Tears shine on every watcher's cheek, love speaks in every 
glance ; 

For your dear lad, and my dear lad, are on their way to 
France. 

Before them, through a mist of years, in soldier buff or 
blue, 

Brave comrades from a thousand fields watch now in proud 

review; 
The same old Flag, the same old Faith — the Freedom 

of the World — 
Spells Duty in those flapping folds above long ranks 

unfurled. 
Strong are the hearts which bear along Democracy's 

advance. 
As your dear lad, and my dear lad, go on their way to 

France. 

The word rings out; a million feet tramp forward on the 
road. 

Along that path of sacrifice o'er which their fathers strode. 

With eager eyes and cheeks aflame, with cheers on smiling 

lips. 
These fighting men of '17 move onward to their ships. 
Nor even love may hold them back, or halt that stern 

advance. 
As your dear lad, and my dear lad, go on their way to 

France. 



LILLE, LAON, AND ST. DIE ^59 

LILLE, LAON, AND ST. DIE 

JOHN FINLEY 
I 
Lille, Laon, and St. Die! 
What memories, from -far away, 
When happy France was wont to be 
Weaving her peaceful tapestry 
And singing by her clacking loom 
Amid her gardens all a-bloom — 
What memories, from far away, 
Of France's joyous yesterday 
Rise through the dimming mists of years, 
The smoke of battle and the tears 
Of those who daily look across 
The furrowed, crimsoned fields of loss 
Ploughed all the trenched and barbed way 
From Lille to Laon and St. Die. 

II 

Lille! 
Long, long ago I was in Lille ; — 
E'en then a veil did half conceal 
Her face, but not the fleecy rack 
Of clouds upon the shrieking track 
Of shell and shrapnel bearing death ; 
It was the sweet sea-vapor's breath 
Encircling her as if in fear 
I 'd see the living T^te de Cire 
And ne'er contented be elsewhere 
In this then peaceful world. 'Twas there 
They made for me a regal feast ; 
But now we here who have the least 



i6o THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Have more than they who had the most 
And played so gallantly the host ; — 
And so, as my own prayer is said : 
"Give us this day our daily bread," 
For those who hunger, top, I pray 
In Lille and Laon and St. Die. 

Ill 

Laon ! 

I climbed to Laon above the plain 

Where now the Teuton battle-stain 

Colors the crag, to find the spot 

Where he was bom who left his lot 

Of luxury to bear Christ's name 

To savages that fought with dart 

And tomahawk, but knew no art 

To match the red atrocity 

That now holds Laon, in blasphemy 

Of that same Father of us all. 

Would Pere Marquette would come and call 

These heathen to repentance ere 

The Strafe and Krieg and answering guerre 

Shall make the whole wide world a hell ! — 

But if he cannot, we who dwell 

In this free land whose mightiest flood 

He found, will give our mingled blood 

To wash that brutish stain away 

From Lille and Laon and St. Die. 

IV 

And St. Die! 
Dear is this village of the Vosges 
List'ning afar the Marne's eloge 



LILLE, LAON, AND ST. DIE i6i 

And to herself repeating o'er 
The word she whisp'ring spoke before 
All others in the world — a word 
That all the planet since has heard — 
** America!" Here was the spring 
Of our loved country's christening ; 
Here in this cloistered scholar's haunt 
Was our New World baptismal font, 
Now scarred and blackened by the guns 
Of Europe's scientific Huns. 
America, from that same bowl 
Thou 'It be baptized anew in soul; 
But not by water, by the fire 
Of thine own sacrosanct desire 
For right, flashing in carmine spray 
From Lille to Laon and St. Die. 

V 

Lille, Laon, and St. Die! 
Our battle front, as theirs to-day 
Who fight for France, all unafraid 
Of death, weary but undismayed. 
To help push back the green-gray line 
That it may never leave the Rhine 
Again to menace all the good 
Of long-dreamed human brotherhood. 
Here shall our France-befriended land 
Take now its sacrificial stand; 
Fight for a free humanity. 
Fight for the thing that ought to be, 
And our great debt to France repay 
At Lille and Laon and St. Die. 
12 



VIVIANI AT SPRINGFIELD! 

Gentlemen and Ladies: 

Before coming here we went to the field of silence to 
lay quick-fading flowers on the immortal tomb of Abraham 
Lincoln and bear to his shade the greeting of all France. 

And I would have you know that however great the 
distance between Springfield and France may be, the 
radiance of his noble face has long been known in our 
native land. In no democracy did any man offer the 
world a purer image than he by his noble career. That 
career is far better known by you than by me. You 
know that, born of the people, the son of a man who could 
not read, after having in his youth suffered every sort of 
privation, he rose through silent meditation, by study, to 
the full cultivation of his mind and the full development 
of his will. You know that silently he rose to the siimmit 
of civic honor ; and that from the summit he had attained 
he looked with untroubled gaze upon a great, an heroic, 
a tragic duty; he knew that the minds of men cannot 
without abasement live in contact with injustice. And 
that is why whatever pity and compassion rent his soul, 
since the equality of all human beings must needs be pro- 
claimed, since the laws must needs rise to the level of 
man's dignity in all places, he let loose civil war upon his 
native land — that civil war whose heroes we have seen in 
their old age reconciled, wherever we have passed. On 
the morrow of his gigantic enterprise he died. He cannot 
be said to have been buried in his triumph ; that triumph 
will last as long as an American is left to revere it, and 

I Delivered May 7, 1917. 

162 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Rene Raphael Viviani 



VIVIANI AT SPRINGFIELD 163 

we have come here to salute his great memory in the name 
of France, of the French Republic. But permit me to 
recall with just pride that the French of the French 
Revolution, of the Revolution of 1848, also proclaimed the 
rights of man. And this shows that all democracies, in 
spite of distance and time, are one. And when three 
years ago Imperial Germany in arms, without provocation, 
without a shadow of excuse, by right of force alone, rushed 
on France, tore up international rights and violated all 
human consciences, France with her allies defended those 
eternal principles. For three years she has defended 
them. And now America in turn, rises to their defense 
at the call of her illustrious President, Mr. Wilson, who, 
too, though a man of thought and a philosopher, has seen 
he must become a man of action when these eternal prin- 
ciples exacted reparation and vengea.nce. 

Now we are all united in this great struggle, to defend 
right and justice. We feel as if at every step in this 
blissful valley we have found old memories of our beloved 
motherland, as if we had never left it. Here we find the 
shades and memories of our forefathers. But is it enough 
to evoke these memories in a speech? Must we bury all 
our ardent hopes in our hearts? I shall not forget, but 
transmit to my fellow countrymen your desire to pay 
back your debt of gratitude to France, in memory of 
Lafayette who brought here help and French soldiers to 
fight for American independence. But permit me, with- 
out any thought of diminishing the effect of your words, 
to define their full sense. It is not to France your debt 
lies. What France did for America, she did for liberty, 
with no thought of exacting a reward for it some day. 
It is to all humanity your debt of gratitude should be paid : 



i64 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

humanity and France here are one. Yes, it is because 
that noble land has at all times in its history held in its 
hands the fate of the world : it is because on our territory 
which seems to have been chosen by history as the meeting 
place for all combats and immolations, the fate of 
the world has so often been decided ; because our children 
with their hearts, their arms, their hands, their brains, 
are struggling even now to keep liberty from perishing, 
to keep disaster away from the whole world; it is because 
of all that you have risen in arms. And when you rally 
to France, you rally to the cause of liberty, of right, of 
democracy. 

Coriie, then. We will bear away from your land the 
memory of these meetings of free citizens, and, when we 
return to our country, when the free citizens of republican 
France ask us what we have seen, we will answer: We 
have seen crowds tumultuous in their joy, enthusiastic 
crowds, but they came not forth to see alone, to gaze on 
passing men : they came as to some great duty, to acclaim 
France through us. We will take back the words of 
all your orators; we will tell what you think, what you 
desire, what you hope for from the future, not only a free 
and delivered France, but a regenerate Europe. 

And when this great work shall have been accom- 
plished, American brothers, faithful to the traditions of 
Washington and Abraham Lincoln, you may return in 
pious pilgrimage to Mount Vernon and to the graveyard 
of Springfield and there bow in silent reverence before the 
two pure heroes of your race. You will most surely have 
served their memory; and rest assured that by so doing 
you will have broadened yet the glorious annals of the 
American Republic. 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY IN FRANCE 165 

THE FATHERLAND 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Where is the true man's fatherland? 

Is it where he by chance is bom? 

Doth not the yearning spirit scorn 
In such scant borders to be spanned? 
Oh ! yes ! his fatherland must be 
As the blue heaven wide and free ! 

Where'er a human heart doth wear 

Job's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves, 
Where'er a himian spirit strives 

After a life more true and fair, 

There is the true man's birthplace grand. 

His is a world-wide fatherland 1 

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY IN FRANCE 

GEORGE MORROW MAYO 

Here's to the Blue of the wind-swept North, 
When we meet on the fields of France; 

May the spirit of Grant be with you all 
As the sons of the North advance. 

And here's to the Gray of the sun-kissed South, 
When we meet on the fields of France ; 

May the spirit of Lee be with you all 
As the sons of the South advance. 

And here's to the Blue and the Gray as one, 
When we meet on the fields of France; 

May the spirit of God be with us all 
As the sons of the Flag advance. 



A WELCOME TO MARSHAL JOFFREi 

CHARLES SEYMOUR WHITMAN 

It is singularly fitting that New York State should first 
bid welcome to our visitors from the French Republic, 
at Washington's military home in Newburgh. This 
place, peculiarly precious to Americans, is not without 
French associations and memories. Here, giving aid and 
comfort, counsel and support, to the leader of our armies, 
lived for many weeks the great son of France, Lafayette, 
and as we recall the events of those dark days of struggle 
and of privation, we realize that Americans and French- 
men have been allies before. 

Those from whom you drew your being came to our 
fathers then, fighting as they were for human rights, for 
justice and for liberty. Aided by France, after seven 
years of struggle, the cause was won, and a nation destined 
to be mighty was brought forth upon this continent. 

Three peoples were represented in the Revolutionary 
War — English, French, Americans. Armies sent by a 
stupid and stubborn monarch did not prevail against the 
spirit and the character of a people who themselves drew 
their inspiration and their strength from their ancestors 
over the sea and who in themselves embodied and repre- 
sented that which was greatest and best in England's 
history and England's tradition far more truly than did 
the English king who sent his soldiers here. 

Again, the representatives of these three peoples meet 
on American soil. Again, the French and the Americans 

1 Delivered May ii, 1917, at the Washington headquarters at 
Newburgh, New York. 

166 




Charles S. Whitman 



A WELCOME TO MARSHAL JOFFRE 167 

are found in Washington's headquarters. Again a stub- 
born and arrogant ruler has plunged his nation into war. 
Despotism gone mad has filled the world with terror. 
But the Frenchman and the Englishman and the American 
are not divided now. The nation whose existence was 
made possible by our French ally over a century ago^ 
composed to-day as it is of people from all lands, speaking 
many languages, with natural affections, some of them, 
for ancestral homes over the sea — is united in devotion 
and loyalty to the flag and all for which it stands. We 
realize that our allies in Europe are fighting for civili- 
zation, as truly as did our fathers fight here; that the 
struggle is a struggle for humanity to-day, as truly as it 
was in 1776, and that no price is too high to pay, no 
sacrifice too great to make, for the holy cause for which 
the sons of Great Britain and France are offering their all. 

We are with these people, battling for the right. Their 
cause is our cause. We have engaged our lives, our liberty 
and our sacred honor that a shadow may be lifted from 
the world and that humanity may be rescued from an 
evil and abominable thing. 

Peace will come again — a peace purchased with the 
blood of martyrs. If the sacrifice is to be worth while — 
if those dead shall not have died in vain, — that peace 
must come only with absolute, complete and final victory. 

On behalf of the State, which is willing and more than 
willing, prepared and ready, to do all that she may be 
called upon to do in your cause and in ours, I bid you 
welcome. The name of the hero of the Marne is as truly 
a household word in the land which Lafayette came to 
save as it is in the land which gave him birth. 

"Welcome" is an easy word to say, and I realize that 



i68 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

to those whose lives have been what yours have been dur- 
ing the last months and years, words may seem like empty 
things. It is a privilege, however, for us to express the 
admiration, the affection and the, reverence that our 
people have grown to possess for the men and for the 
women of France. It is perhaps impossible for us to 
realize all that you have been called upon to endure or to 
appreciate all that you have suffered as you have made 
for your country a place in the hearts and affections of 
mankind which no other nation has ever held. 

I know that I express the honest sentiment of the people 
of the State of New York: "God save, and God bless, 
the Republic of France ! " 



THE NIGHTINGALES OF FLANDERS 

GRACE HAZARD CONKLING 

The nightingales of Flanders, 
They have not gone to war. 

A soldier heard them singing 
Where they had sung before. 

The earth was torn and quaking, 

The sky about to fall; 
The nightingales of Flanders, 

They minded not at all. 

At intervals he heard them 
Between the guns, he said, 

Making a thrilling music 
Above the listening dead. 



SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE 169 

Of woodland and of orchard 
And roadside tree bereft, 
• The nightingales of Flanders 

Were singing ''France is left!'* 

SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE 

HARVEY M. WATTS 

"Somewhere in France" they'll bivouac 'neath the sky, 
As poplared roads lead straightway to the front 
Where the scarred towns have borne the frightful brunt 
Of gun and mine; and all things open lie, 
A cratered desert, grim, where none may ply 

The trades of Peace; but, used to death, full blunt, 
From trench to trench the hidden foe must hunt. 
Giving no quarter as they sullen fly! 
"Somewhere in France" — This is the only hope 
To save from those who batten on the slain, 
To meet the menace of this armored might — 
Where Joan was victor they must more than cope. 
Or else the rumbling tocsin sounds in vain, 
And all that man achieved sinks into night ! 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 

MARSHAL JOFFRE 

Among all the innumerable expressions of sympathy, 
all the kindnesses showered by you on France, none 
touches us so deeply as what you are doing for the orphans 
of our heroic dead. Our children are our most precious 
possession, our joy and our hope, and there is no surer 
way to our hearts than to help these little ones, the most 
pitiful victims of this war for the liberation of the world. 
In their name, in the name of our soldiers of France, I 
thank you, I thank the children of America whose hearts 
have gone out to their stricken little French brothers and 
sisters. The memory of what you have done, of what you 
are doing, will never fade. You have sown the seeds of 
love and friendship between our two countries. They 
will flower when they are men and women. Between 
America and France there is now a tender bond of human 
kindness and affection that nothing can break. 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 

Adown the bright and fluttering street 
Let serried thousands throng. 

And children march with eager feet 
In phalanxes of song. 

That Memory to their latest 

Heirs his glorious deed prolong. 
170 




Copyright by Mayor's 

Marshall Joffre 



GRAND-PERE 171 

GRAND-PERE 

ROBERT W. SERVICE 
And so when he reached my bed 
The General made a stand: 
"My brave young fellow," he said, 
"I would shake your hand." 

So I lifted my arm, the right, 
With never a hand at all : 
Only a stump, a sight 
Fit to appal. 

"Well, well. Now that 's too bad ! 
That's sorrowful luck," he said; 
"But there! You give me, my lad, 
The left instead." 

So from under the blanket's rim 
I raised and showed him the other, 
A snag as ugly and grim 
As its ugly brother. 

He looked at each jagged wrist; 
He looked, but he did not speak ; 
And then he bent down and kissed 
Me on either cheek. 

You wonder now I don't mind 
I hadn't a hand to offer . . . 
They tell me (you know I 'm blind) 
'Twas Grand-pere J of re. 



172 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

CHILDREN OF FRANCE 

GERTRUDE ROBINSON 

Dear little sad-eyed children of France, 
Once on a time, when the world was gay, 
In the streets of Paris you danced and sang, 
God grant you again a happy day, 
Sad little children of France. 

Wan little weary-eyed children of France, 
In the streets of Paris you knelt today. 

Knelt at the sight of a succoring flag. 

Knelt in the streets where you used to play. 
Heartbroken children of France. 

We are thinking today of the long ago, 

Kneeling children beyond the sea. 
When your fathers came, with hearts aflame. 

To us, in the name of liberty. 
Fatherless children of France. 

Fair by the side of the Red, White and Blue 

The Stars and Stripes in your streets are a-blow! 

Never so beautiful, now they glow 

In the name of that help of the long ago. 
Kneeling babies of France. 

You knelt in your streets as our flag went by — 
Our flag with a glory strangely new. 

The stars of heaven gleamed in its folds. 
Strewn but today in that field of blue. 
For you, O children of France! 



CHILDREN OF FRANCE 173 

Dear little war-smitten children of France, 
In our hearts is a prayer as the flag goes by — 

For the flag we have vowed to a glorious quest, 
For the flag aflame on a far away sky, 
For God — and the babies of France. 



FRATERNAL MESSAGE TO AMERICA^ 

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZTO 

For the soul of Italy to-day the Capitol at Washington 
has become a beacon-light. Now the group of stars on 
the banner of the great Republic has become a con- 
stellation of the spring, like the Pleiades ; a propitious sign 
to sailors, armed and unarmed alike; a spiritual token for 
all nations fighting a righteous war. I give the salute of 
Italy, of the Roman Capitol to the Capitol at Washington ; 
a salute to the people of the Union, who now confirm and 
seal the pledge that liberty shall be preserved. The 
spontaneous act consummated by the people of George 
Washington is a glorious sacrifice on behalf of the hopes 
of all mankind. 

Our war is not destructive. It is creative. With all 
manner of atrocities, all manner of shameful acts, the 
barbarian has striven to destroy the idea which, until this 
struggle began, man had of man. The barbarian multi- 
plied on the innocent, infamous outrages inspired by hate, 
alternating senile impudence and brutal stupidity. The 
barbarian ground heroism to earth, cast down the airy 
cathedrals where congregated the aspirations of the eternal 
soul, burned the seats of wisdom decked with the flowers 
of all the arts; distorted the lineaments of Christ, tore off 
the garments of the Virgin. 

Now once again we begin to have hope of the nobility 
of man. Love's face is radiant, though its eyes are 
moist with tears, for never was love so much beloved. 
Love overflows on all the world like a brook in May. 

1 Sent April 7, 191 7, on our entrance into war. 

174 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Gabriele D'Annunzio 



DECLARATION OF WAR BY ITALY 175 

Our hearts are not large enough to gather it and to hold it. 
The people of Lincoln, springing to their feet to defend 
the eternal spirit of man to-day, increase immeasurably 
this sum of love opposed to fury, the fury of the barbarian. 



ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI 

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

** I will die cheering, if I needs must die; 

So shall my last breath write upon my lips 

Viva Italia! when my spirit slips 
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; 
And those who shall behold me where I lie 

Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips 

From glory into glory! the eclipse 
Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!' 

" Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine, 
The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay ! 

Let thy dear light from my dead body shine 
And to the passer-by thy message say : 

'Eccol though heaven has made my skies divine, 
My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye! ' " 

DECLARATION OF WAR BY ITALY 

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 

Now the arm of Rome was raised, the right hand of Rome 

was lifted to shake and to shatter. 
But we beheld our signs no more: there was no prophet 

among us, nor any that knew how long . . . 
The bombs rumble over Monte Nero: the guns thunder 

over Piedmont ... 



176 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

The dead, O, Italy: thy dead . . . 

Then was heard from on high a voice without flesh which 

said, 
"Blessed are the dead!": a voice made itself felt, 

announcing, "Blessed are those that die for 

thee!" . . . 
The dead shall have a new song: and the desert shall be 

sanctified. 



OUT OF ROME 

CLINTON SCOLLARD 

Out of Rome they march as when 
Scipio led his serried men. 

While the cry of "Viva! Viva!" 
Rings again and yet again. 

They, in dreams of high desire, 
Rousing them to holy ire, 
On the Capitolian altars 
Have beheld the vestal fire. 

Rear and vanguard, first and last, 
They have caught the virile, vast. 

Emulous centurion ardour 
From some legion of the past. 

Win they laurel wreath or rue, 
We must feel that this is true. 

That the ancient Roman valotu* 
Thrills through Italy anew! 



TO THE YOUNG MEN OF ITALY 1/7 

TO THE YOUNG MEN OF ITALY 

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 

The Italian movement, my countrymen, is, by decree 
of Providence, that of Europe. We arise to give a pledge 
of moral progress to the European world. But neither 
political fictions, nor dynastic aggrandizements, nor 
theories of expediency, can transform or renovate the life 
of the peoples. Humanity lives and moves through 
faith; great principles are the guiding stars that lead 
Europe toward the future. Let us turn to the graves 
of our martyrs, and ask inspiration of those who died for 
us all, and we shall find the secret of victory in the adora- 
tion of a faith. The angel of martyrdom and the angel 
of victory are brothers; but the one looks up to heaven, 
and the other looks down to earth; and it is when, from 
epoch to epoch, their glance meets between earth and 
heaven, that creation is embellished with a new life and 
a people arises from the cradle or the tomb, evangelist 
or prophet. . . . 

Love your country. Your country is the land where 
yoMT parents sleep, where is spoken that language in 
which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the 
first word of love; it is the home that God has given you, 
that, by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may 
prepare to ascend to Him. It is your name, your glory, 
your sign among the people. Give to it your thoughts, 
your counsels, your blood. Raise it up, great and beauti- 
ful as it was foretold by our great men, and see that you 
leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood or of 
servitude; unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be 
one, as the thought of God. You are twenty-five milhons 
of men, endowed with active, splendid faculties; possessing 

13 



178 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

a tradition of glory the envy of the nations of Europe. 
An immense future is before you; you lift your eyes to 
the loveliest heaven, and around you smiles the loveliest 
land in Europe; you are encircled by the Alps and the 
sea, boundaries traced out by the finger of God for a 
people of giants — you are bound to be such, or to be 
nothing. . . . 

Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own 
mission from the aim set by God before humanity at 
large. God has given you your country as cradle and 
humanity as mother; you can not rightly love your breth- 
ren of the cradle if you love not the common mother. 
Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples now 
fighting or preparing to fight the holy fight of independ- 
ence, of nationality, of liberty; other peoples striving by 
different routes to reach the same goal — improvement, 
association, and the foundation of an authority which 
shall put an end to moral anarchy and relink the earth to 
heaven; an authority which mankind may love and obey 
without remorse or shame. Unite with them; they will 
unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your 
single arm can suffice to conquer; but say to them that 
the hour will shortly sound for a terrible struggle between 
right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever 
be found with those who have raised the same banner 
as yourselves. 

And love, young men, love and venerate the ideal. The 
ideal is the Word of God. High above every country, 
high above humanity, is the country^of the spirit, the__city 
of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the 
inviolability of thought and in the dignity of our immortal 
soul; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. 



TO THE YOUNG MEN OF ITALY 179 

From that high sphere spring the principles which alone 
can redeem the peoples. Arise for the sake of these, and 
not from impatience of suffering or dread of evil. Anger, 
pride, ambition, and the desire of material prosperity are 
arms common alike to the peoples and their oppressors, 
and even should you conquer with these to-day, you 
would fall again to-morrow; but principles belong to the 
peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to 
oppose them. Adore enthusiasm, the dreams of the vir- 
gin soul and the visions of early youth, for they are a per- 
fume of paradise which the soul retains in issuing from the 
hands of its Creator. Respect above all things your 
conscience; have upon your lips the truth implanted by 
God in yoiu" hearts, and while laboring in harmony, even 
with those who differ from you, in all that tends to the 
emancipation of our soil, yet ever bear your own banner 
erect and boldly promulgate your own faith. . . . 
God be with^you, and bless Italy! 



SERBIA'S SACRIFICE! 

MAJOR STOBART 

As Serbian politicians looked from the heights of their 
Serbian mountains upon the glories of their fertile land, 
a land of com and bread, a land of wine and vineyards, 
they must have heard the Tempter's words, whispering 
as of old, "All these things will I give you if — if — you 
will fall down and worship militarism and the Central 
Powers." But with one voice the Serbian people an- 
swered, "Get thee behind me, Satan. It is written in 
our hearts, ' Thou shalt worship Freedom : her only shalt 
thou serve.' " Thus Serbia, the latest evoked of the 
European nations, perceived with an insight at which 
history will one day marvel, the inner, the true interpre- 
tation of the word "nation." She perceived that the 
life force of a nation is a spiritual force, and is not depend- 
ent on material conditions for existence. Serbia had 
existed during five hundred years of material annihilation 
under Turkish rule. Through all that wilderness of time 
the ideal of freedom had been her pillar of cloud by day 
and of fire by night, pointing to the Promised Land. 
Serbia is again in the wilderness, and the same light 
guides and cheers her. She is full of courageous faith, 
because she understands that a nation means, primarily, 
not physical country (mountains, rivers, valleys), not 
State, not Government, but a free and united spirit. 
That is the only definition which allows of the indefinite 
expansion which will some day include all human kind 
in one united nation. Serbia is full of faith and hope, 
1 From The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere. 
l8o 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Major St. Clair Stobart 



SERBIA i8i 

because she knows that she is not, and never will be, 
deprived of nationhood. 

In some minor ways Serbia may, in her civilization, 
have been behind other nations in the west of Europe, 
but she was ahead of Western Europe in that one thing 
which is of real importance, that one thing which cannot 
be copied or learned from other nations, and which is 
therefore either innate or unachievable: Serbia is ahead 
of other nations in her power of sacrificing herself for 
ideals. All nations are ready to sacrifice life for nation- 
hood. Serbia made first this common sacrifice, but when 
that did not avail, she voluntarily, for the sake of an 
abstract and spiritual ideal, made the supreme sacrifice, 
the sacrifice of country, the sacrifice for which other 
nations make the penultimate sacrifice of life. The 
Serbian people sacrificed their country rather than bow 
the knee to militarism and foreign tyranny ; they sacrificed 
their country in Utopian quest for the right, both for 
themselves and for other Slav brethren, to work out their 
own salvation in spiritual freedom. A people with such 
ideals, and with such power of sacrifice, must be worthy 
of a great future. 

SERBIA 

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 

Hark, from the East a keen and bitter cry — 

New tears are flowing in the furrows of old sorrow. 
On your wasted fields your dead drift like fallen leaves ; 

Only the Pale Harvester garners heavy sheaves. 
How have you the courage to struggle toward to- 
morrow, 
Serbia, Serbia, land that will not die? 



i82 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

/ have stood for freedom — freedom can not perish. 

I have stood for honor — honor must endure. 
But my children starve, the children who should cherish 

For the world's to-morrow my spirit flaming-pure. 
You who sit in safety, you whose babes are fed, 

You who by the peril of other men are free, 
Listen to my living, ere the hour be sped, 

Lest you hear forever the silence of my dead. 
Serbia, Serbia, God hears. Do we? 

SCARRED 

Far nobler the sword that is nicked and worn, 
Far fairer the flag that is grimy and torn, 
Than when to the battle fresh they were borne. 

He was tried and found true ; He stood the test ; 
'Neath whirlwinds of doubt, when all the rest 
Crouched down and submitted, He fought best. 

There are wounds on His breast that can never be healed. 
There are gashes that bleed and may not be sealed, 
But, wounded and gashed, He won the field. 

And others may dream in their easy chairs. 

And point their white hands to the scars He bears; 

And the^palm and the laurel are His — not theirs. 

SALONIKA IN NOVEMBER 

BRIAN HILL 

Up above the gray hills the wheeling birds are calling. 
Round about the cold gray hills in never-resting flight ; 

Far along the marshes a drifting mist is falling. 

Scattered tents and sandy plain melt into the night. 



SALONIKA IN NOVEMBER 183 

Round about the gray hills rumbles distant thunder, 
Echoes of the mighty guns firing night and day, — 

Gray guns, long guns, that smite the hills asunder, 
Grumbling and rumbling, and telling of the fray. 

Out among the islands twinkling lights are glowing. 
Distant Httle fairy lights, that gleam upon the bay; 

All along the broken road gray transport wagons going 
Up to where the long gray guns roar and crash alway. 

Up above the cold gray hills the wheel-birds are crying. 
Brother calls to brother, as they pass in restless flight. 

Lost souls, dead souls, voices of the dying. 

Circle o'er the hills of Greece and wail into the night. 

— From The Poetry Review 



WOMAN'S DUTY! 

MRS. PERCY V. PENNYBACKER 

There was never greater need for women to be sane than 
at this hour. There is no excuse for excitement or for 
hysteria. If our men are to give the best that is in them, 
we must keep the atmosphere of our homes sweet and 
serene. Remember, no sacrifice is a great sacrifice unless 
it is made cheerfully. Let there be no weeping, no com- 
plaining, no lamentation, when our beloved ones answer 
the call to duty. 

This is also a time for moral sanity and for lofty ideals. 
I wish I could burn into the heart of every young woman 
the remark that a distinguished military man made a 
few days ago: "The influence of young women on sol- 
diers is terrifying in its strength; it is not what a woman 
says, it is not what a woman does, it is what she really is 
that counts. Men sense inmost beliefs. Men raise or 
lower their ideals as she dictates." This is an awful 
responsibility, young women, but it is yours; you cannot 
escape it. In these days of distress, every woman should 
pass her soul in review before herself and ask: "What 
are my standards? Do I really believe that the Com- 
mandments were given for men as well as for women? 
Do I realize that I am in part 'my brother's keeper'? " 
In dress, in speech, in manner, in thought, are the young 
women of America doing their full duty to help our boys 
in the ranks to retain the loftiest ideals of womanhood, 
to live clean lives, to take as much pride in moral as in 
physical victory? It is the duty of every woman in this 

1 From a speechldelivered July 6, 191 7. 

184 



WOMAN'S DUTY 185 

country to help, because the happiness of all is at stake! — 
the salvation of the next generation is in peril. 

It is the duty of women — the special duty — to see that 
no hate enters into our hearts. If we banish this mon- 
ster, our husbands, sons and lovers will find it easier to 
shut their souls to hate. President Wilson has well said, 
"We are not making war on the German people." This 
is a holy war, and in such a struggle there is no place for 
hatred. No one who has lived in Germany, as some of 
us have, and has known the lovely home life, can hate the 
German people. No one who has been ill in Germany, as 
some of us have, and has received generous kindness and 
consideration, can hate the German people. No one who 
has studied history aright and has learned the con- 
tributions made to the happiness of the world by the men 
and women of Germany, can hate the German people. 

As I sit in church on Sunday and see the Cross borne 
down the aisle, my heart is thrilled when I behold that 
now, side by side with the Cross, comes the Flag. At the 
altar they stand like twin sentinels guarding the Holy of 
Holies. I love to think of our America today as a 
gracious, beautiful matron. In her hour of peril, before 
the altar she calls her stalwart sons, she calls her fair 
young daughters, and says: "My children, behold this 
Flag, 'the Stars and Stripes'; it has been baptized in 
blood and sacrifice; it stands for liberty and love; it has 
never stood for oppression, for tyranny, for conquest. 
You were bom beneath it; it has cherished you; I give it 
now into your hands. Guard it, die for it, but forget not 
that with this Flag I give you another — the Flag of 
Christ — the Flag that has said for two thousand years, 
and says today, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' " 



1 86 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

THE BRAVE AT HOME 

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 
I 

The maid who binds her warrior's sash 

With smile that well her pain dissembles, 
The while beneath her drooping lash 

One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles, 
Though Heaven alone records the tear, 

And Fame shall never know her story, 
Her heart has shed a drop as dear 

As e're bedewed the field of glory ! 

II 

The wife who girds her husband's sword. 

Mid little ones who weep or wonder. 
And bravely speaks the cheering word. 

What though her heart be rent asunder. 
Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear 

The bolts of death around him rattle. 
Hath shed as sacred blood as e're 

Was poured upon the field of battle ! 

in 

The mother who conceals her grief 

While to her breast her son she presses, 
Then breathes a few brave words and brief, 

Kissing the patriot brow she blesses, 
With no one but her secret God 

To know the pain that weighs upon her. 
Sheds holy blood as e're the sod 

Received on Freedom's field of honor! 



MOTHERING 187 

TO WOMAN 
LAWRENCE BINYON 

Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts 
That have foreknown the utter price, 
Your hearts bum upward Hke a flame 
Of splendor and of sacrifice. 

For you too to battle go, 

Not with the marching drums and cheers, 

But in the watch of solitude 

And through the boundless night of fears. 

And not a shot comes blind with death 
And not a stab of steel is pressed 
Home, but invisibly it tore 
And entered first a woman's breast. 



MOTHERING 

LIEUTENANT H. BUCHANAN RYLEY ' 

"He who goes a-mothering finds violets in the lane." — Old 
Proverb. 

"Oh, whirl of leaves, Oh, sobbing breeze. 
About the gates of spring. 
When the west wind brings the exiles home 

From weary wandering; 
And down the rut-worn way they haste — 

God, but their feet are fain! 
And he who goes a-mothering 
Finds violets in the lane. 



i38 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

**Dear Lord, throw open wide Thy doors 

For souls to enter in ! 
The bitter exile over-past 

The home-time shall begin ! 
Loved hands and lips draw nigh again 

To welcome and to bless, 
And the half -forgotten days renew 

Their springtime loveliness. 

"Oh, the violets round the Tree of Life, 
Sweet violets round the brim 
Of ever-welling water-floods 
Where day grows never dim; 

Where tears are dried, and dead hopes raised, 

And so for you and me 
Our hearts shall go a-mothering 

For all eternity!" 

(This poem written by Lieutenant Ryley was recently sent to The 
Living Church as his last production, with the words: "I have lost two 
sons in this hellish war and expect to fall myself. But always my 
heart is in U. S. A., though my duty is on the firing line." He was 
killed near Jerusalem, December 15, 191 7.) 

TO A MOTHER 

EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland — 
Two hearts in one and one among the dead, 
Before your grave with an uncovered head 

I, that am man, disquiet and silent stand 

In reverence. It is your blood they shed; 
It is your sacred self that they demand, 
For one you bore in joy and hope, and planned 

Would make yourself eternal, now has fied. 



ANY WOMAN TO A SOLDIER 189 

But though you yielded him unto the knife 

And altar with a royal sacrifice 
Of your most precious self and dearer life — 

Your master gem and pearl above all price — 
Content you; for the dawn this night restores 
Shall be the dayspring of his soul and yours. 

ANY WOMAN TO A SOLDIER 

GRACE ELLERY CHANNING 

The day you march away — let the sun shine, 
Let everything be blue and gold and fair, 
Triumph of tnmipets calling through bright air, 
Flags slanting, flowers flaunting— not a sign 
That the unbearable is now to bear. 
The day you march away. 

The day you march away— this I have sworn. 

No matter what comes after, that shall be 

Hid secretly between my soul and me 

As women hide the unborn — 

You shall see brows like banners, lips that frame 

Smiles, for the pride those lips have in your name. 

You shall see soldiers in my eyes that day— 

That day, my soldier, when you march away. 

The day you march away — cannot I guess? 
There will be ranks and ranks, all leading on 
To one white face, and then — the white face gone, 
And nothing left but a gray emptiness — 
Blurred moving masses, faceless, featureless — 
The day you march away. 



190 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

You cannot march away ! However far, 
Farther and faster still I shall have fled 
Before you; and that moment when you land, 
Voiceless, invisible, close at your hand 
My heart shall smile, hearing the steady tread 
Of your faith-keeping feet. 

First at the trenches I shall be to greet ; 
There's not a watch I shall not share with you; 
But more — but most — there where for you the red, 
Drenched, dreadful, splendid, sacrificial field lifts up 
Inflexible demand, 

I will be there! 

My hands shall hold the cup. 

My hands beneath your head 

Shall bear you — not the stretcher bearer's — through 

All anguish of the dying and the dead; 

With all your wounds I shall have ached and bled. 

Waked, thirsted, starved, been fevered, gasped for breath, 

Felt the death dew; 

And you shall live, because my heart has said 

To Death 

That Death itself shall have no part in you! 



LABOR MUST BEAR ITS PART^ 

WOODROW WILSON 

While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among 
other things, that labor is free, and that means a ntimber 
of interesting things. It means not only that we must 
do what we have declared our purpose to do — see that 
the conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous 
by the war — but also that we shall see to it that the 
instrumentalities by which the conditions of labor are 
improved are not blocked nor checked. 

To "stand together" means that nobody must inter- 
rupt the processes of our energy if the interruption can 
possibly be avoided without the absolute invasion of 
freedom. Nobody has a right to stop the processes of 
labor until all the methods of conciliation and settlement 
have been exhausted. 

In order to clear the atmosphere and come down to 
business, everybody on both sides has got to transact 
business, and the settlement is never impossible when 
both sides want to do the square and right thing. More- 
over, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties 
can be brought face to face. I can differ with a man 
much more radically when he is n't in the room than I 
can when he is in the room, because then the awkward 
thing is that he can come back at me and answer what I 
say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor 
entirely to himself. And, therefore, we must insist in 
every instance that the parties come into each other's 
presence and there discuss the issues between them, and 

1 From a speech delivered November 12, 191 7. 

191 



192 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

not separately in places which have no communication 
with each other. 

I like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an 
Englishman of a past generation, Charles Lamb. He 
was with a group of friends and he spoke harshly of some 
man who was not present. I ought to say that Lamb 
stuttered a little bit. And one of his friends said, "Why, 
Charles, I didn't know that you knew So-and-so?" 
"Oh," he said, "I don't. I can't hate a man I know." 

There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleasant 
human nature, in that saying. It is hard to hate a man 
you know. I may admit, parenthetically, that there are 
some politicians whose methods I do not at all believe in, 
but they are jolly good fellows, and if they would not talk 
the wrong kind of politics with me I would love to be with 
them. And so it is all along the line, in serious matters 
and things less serious. We are all of the same clay and 
spirit, and we can get together if we desire to get together. 

Therefore my counsel to you is this : Let us show our- 
selves Americans by showing that we do not want to go 
off in separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we 
want to cooperate with all other classes and all other 
groups in a common enterprise, which is to release the 
spirits of the world from bondage. I would be willing 
to set that up as the final test of an American. That is 
the meaning of democracy. 

We claim to be the greatest democratic people in the 
world, and democracy means, first of all, that we can 
govern ourselves. If our men have not self-control, 
then they are not capable of that great thing which we 
call democratic government. A man who takes the law 
into his own hands is not the right man to cooperate in 



LABOR MUST BEAR ITS PART 193 

any form of orderly development of law and institutions. 
And some of the processes by which the struggle between 
capital and labor is carried on are processes that come very 
near to taking the law into your own hands. I do not 
mean for a moment to compare them with what I have 
just been speaking of, but I want you to see that they are 
mere gradations of the manifestations of the unwillingness 
to cooperate. The fundamental lesson of the whole 
situation is that we must not only take common counsel, 
but that we must yield to and obey common counsel. 
Not all of the instnmientalities for this are at hand. 

I am hopeful that in the very near future new instru- 
mentalities may be organized by which we can see to it 
that various things that are now going on shall not go on. 
There are various processes of the dilution of labor and 
the unnecessary substitution of labor and bidding in 
different markets and unfairly upsetting the whole com- 
petition of labor which ought not to go on — I mean now, 
on the part of employers — and we must interject into 
this some instrumentality of cooperation by which the 
fair thing will be done all around. 

I am hopeful that some such instnmientalities may be 
devised, but whether they are or not, we must use those 
that we have and upon every occasion where it is neces- 
sary have such an instrumentality originated upon that 
occasion, if necessary. 

And so, my fellow-citizens, the reason that I came 
away from Washington is that I sometimes get lonely 
down there — there are so many people in Washington 
who know things that are not so, and there are so few 
people in Washington who know anything about what the 
people of the United States are thinking about. I have 
14 



194 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY ' 

to come away to get reminded of the rest of the country. 
I have come away to talk to men who are up against the 
real thing and say to them, I am with you if you are with 
me. The only test of being with me is not to think about 
me personally at all, but merely to think of me as the 
expression for the time being of the power and dignity and 
hope of the American people. 

THE KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT 

THEODOSIA GARRISON 
We are the keepers of that steadfast Hght 
That guides a people's course and 'destiny; 
Not ours the skill directing over the sea 
The mighty beams that blaze the path aright : 
Ours but the hands that, serving, keep it bright, 
The bringers of the oil, the workers we 
Who day long, without pause and faithfully. 
Toil that its radiance may pierce the night. 

Above us are the wills that guide and turn; 
It is not ours to watch nor question these: 
Ours but to see each wick is trimmed and fit. 
Lest on a night of storm it fails to burn 
And a Great Ship goes down in awful seas. 
O Keepers of the Hght, keep faith with it! 

A SONG OF SERVICE 

THEODOSIA GARRISON 

Folly and Complacency went singing through the dark, 
They paused before a window that showed a candle's 
- -. spark. : . 



A SONG OF SERVICE 195 

"Come forth, come forth and join us or bid us entrance 

win!" 
"Nay, I've a wheel a-turning and I have wool to spin; 
Unless your hands may aid me ye shall not enter in." 

Folly and Complacency went singing through the night; 
They paused before a casement that showed a shining 

light. 
"Now bid us in, old Comrade, to revel until day ! " 
"Nay, I've a sword to sharpen to keep a foe at bay; 
Unless your hands may aid me I speed you on your way." 

Oh, there are swords to sharpen and there is wool 

to spin, 
And woe betide the foolish ones who let these wastrels in ! 
At the cost of a dulled sword a people may be sold; 
For lack of warmth a nation may perish in the cold, 
And unto us the reckoning and price thereof be told. 

Folly and Complacency — ^^on our heads be the sin 

If once our hands should slacken, our voices bid you in. 

While there's a sword to sharpen, while there's a wheel 

to turn, 
A word to say, a prayer to pray, a signal light to burn, 
God give us strength and wakefulness to match the wage 

we earn. 



MORE THAN A NAME^ 

SAMUEL GOMPERS 

To me the term America is more than a name. It is 
more than a country. It is more than a continent. To 
me America is the apotheosis, a symbol of the ideas and 
the ideals for human betterment and human justice among 
the peoples of the world. Perhaps it may be strengthened 
by the hope, but somehow there is a sub-consciousness 
in me that tells me that when for the first time in the 
history of the world a Teutonic army shall face the soldiers 
of the United States with the flag, the Star-Spangled 
Banner, waving above them, it will penetrate the very 
souls of the men in the German uniform. In all their 
fights they have met men carrying the standards that 
Germany hated. They have never yet come in contact 
with Old Glory. 

I ought to say, my friends, that the policy pursued by 
the government of the United States in this war, in matters 
of development and growth and preparation, amazes 
those who are permitted to know the truth. Some day, 
my friends, you and I, who may be kept from all the 
information just now, will know what marvels America 
has done within these past few months. And then, too, 
we have started out on a different line of action than in 
any previous wars in which we or any of the other coun- 
tries on the globe have entered. It is to the honor of 
the committee of which I am chairman, that the bill was 
drafted which provides not only for compensation for 
injured soldiers and sailors and for their dependents, but 

1 From a speech delivered at Buffalo, September 14, 1917. 
196 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Samuel Gompers 



MORE THAN A NAME 197 

also insurance, so that if any of the men come back 
injured they at least shall have the insurance to give 
them and their dependents an opportunity to live in 
some degree of comfort, and the opportunity of increas- 
ing their pay so that they can afford to lay something 
away as a nest-egg for themselves or to give to their 
families. We have tried to formulate a measure that 
shall relieve for all time the people of our country of the 
scandals and the injustice of the old pensions system, 
taking our experience as to the difference of the industrial 
and employers' liability acts and the substitution of com- 
pensation for workmen so as to apply it to the soldiers 
and the sailors of Uncle Sam. We hope that the boys 
who are already in France and the boys who are going 
over to France may have minds free from the worry that 
their families may possibly go down in the standard of 
life prevalent in their community. We want the boys of 
Uncle Sam fighting for us to feel that America, great 
America, will stand by them or those they may possibly 
leave behind them. And I am proud to say that that 
measure passed the House of Representatives yesterday 
by an almost unanimous vote. 

We do not know now just exactly what sacrifices we 
may be called upon to make. Let us pray and hope and 
work that they may be few, if any at all ; but this we feel 
assured of, from the President down to everyone aiding 
him and his in the great work of carrying on the war, it 
is the purpose that the home shall be maintained, that the 
standard of American life shall not go down, but shall be 
maintained throughout the war. 

We must make it possible that our fighting force shall be 
provided with every necessity to fight and every means 



198 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

contributing to their subsistence and comfort, and that 
the American people shall go on in their economic, indus- 
trial, social and spiritual life just as well as it is possible 
to do; and so, when it is necessary to make additional 
sacrifices, we shall — you, and you, and you — the people 
of Chicago, the people of Illinois, the people of the United 
States, stand as one solid phalanx of the manhood and 
the womanhood of the people of our country, of our 
republic, united, determined to stand by our cause and 
our gallant allies until the world has been made safe for 
freedom, for justice, for democracy, for humanity. 



WHAT THE STATE IS 

SIR WILLIAM JONES 

"What constitutes a state? 

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound. 

Thick wall or moated gate; 
Nor cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Nor bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 

Not starred and spangled courts. 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No: — men, high-minded men, 

Men who their duties know. 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain." 



SOLDIERS OF FREEDOM 199 

SOLDIERS OF FREEDOM 

KATHARINE LEE BATES 
They veiled their souls with laughter 

And many a mocking pose, 
These lads who follow after 

Wherever Freedom goes ; 
These lads we used to censure 

For levity and ease, 
On Freedom's high adventure 

Go shining overseas. 

Our springing tears adore them, 

These boys at school and play, 
Fair-fortuned years before them, 

Alas ! but yesterday ; 
Divine with sudden splendor 

— Oh, how our eyes were blind ! — 
In careless self -surrender 

They battle for mankind. 

Soldiers of Freedom! Gleaming 

And golden they depart. 
Transfigured by the dreaming 

Of boyhood's hidden heart. 
Her lovers they confess them 

And, rushing on her foes. 
Toss her their youth — God bless them ! — 

As lightly as a rose. 



200 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

THE KHAKI 

HENRY EDWARD WARNER 
I 

The khaki, the khaki! It flows in sohd waves 
Over the tops of shell holes, over the tops of graves, 
Over the fields of Flanders, on to the Boche line — 
And pride shall be behind them, and these hot tears of 

mine ! 
Tears for the heroes fallen, smiles for the men gone on, 
Cheers for the stout, brave hearts of them who battle for 

the dawn — 
The dawn of earth's new freedom! And we who watch 

and pray 
Will grow our flowers for the wreaths of khaki sailed away ! 

II 

The khaki, the khaki ! O Thou who seest all, 

Keep to the fore with khaki, and fend the shell and ball ! 

Strong in the might of virtue, strong for the newborn 

light 
That signals freedom's coming day and scatters hopeless 

night. 
The khaki, noble khaki, shall sweep o'er Flanders field, 
Driving the hatred of the Hun until all hell shall yield! 
And Thou who guidest planets — O Pilot of the soul! — 
Thy voice shall give supreme command, Thy peace shall 

make us whole ! 



LESSONS OF THE WARi 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

No man could fail to be thrilled by facing an audience 
like this, and I accept your greeting as not for me per- 
sonally, but for the thing for which I stand — for Ameri- 
canism, one flag, one country, and an undivided loyalty 
from every man and woman in this land. 

We have a double right and double duty in connection 
with Americanism. On the one hand to suffer no dis- 
crimination against any man because of his birth or his 
creed, and on the other hand to insist that no man has 
a right to live in this country if he has any of Lot's wife 
attitude of looking back toward another country. 

In the days of the Revolution we became a nation 
because Washington and the men who followed him in 
the field, and the men who signed the Declaration of 
Independence with him, because those men, although 
predominantly of English blood, stood straight against 
England and for America. 

That lesson does not teach that we are to hate England. 
It is a mean and small soul who draws that lesson from it. 
That lesson teaches that we are to love liberty and to hate 
wrong, and stand for the right and against the wrong in 
each crisis as it comes up. The men of English descent 
in 1776 and in 18 12 fought England because England was 
the foe of liberty and of America. And in just the same 
way we have a right to demand, not as a favor, but as 
a right, that every man of German descent now stand 

^ From the speech delivered at Dexter Pavilion, Chicago, September 8 , 
1918. 

201 



202 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Americans against 
the bloody tyranny of the Prussianized autocracy of 
GeiTnany. 

And now in this country the events of the last three 
years will teach us much if we have the wit to read the 
lessons aright. There must be in this country one flag, 
only one flag, one allegiance, and only one allegiance, and 
one language, and that the language of the Declaration 
of Independence, of Washington's farewell address, of 
Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, and President Wilson's 
Message to Congress. 

AMERICA RESURGENT 

WENDELL PHILLIP STAFFORD 

She is risen from the dead ! 

Loose the tongue and lift the head; 

Let the sons of light rejoice. 
She has heard the challenge clear; 
She has answered " I am here " ; 

She has made the stainless choice. 

Bound with iron and with gold — 
But her limbs they could not hold 

When the word of words was spoken ; . 
Freedom calls — ' 

The prison walls 

Tumble, and the bolts are broken! 

Hail her ! She is ours again — 
Hope and heart of harassed men 

And the tyrants' doom and terror. 



IN FORTY WEST 203- 

Send abroad the old alarms ; 
Call to arms, to arms, to arms. 

Hand of doubt and feet of error ! 

■ Cheer her! She is free at last, 
With her back upon the past. 

With her feet upon the bars. 
Hosts of freedom sorely prest, 
Lo, a light is in the west 

And a helmet full of star-s ! 

IN FORTY WEST 
We are coming from the ranch; from the city and the 

mine, 
And the word has gone before us to the town upon the 

Rhine ; 

As the rising of the tide 
On the Old -World side. 
We are coming to:the battle, to the Line. 

From the valleys of Virginia, from the Rockies in the 

North, 
We are coming by battalions, for the word was carried 

forth: 

"We have put the pen away 
And the sword is out to-day, 
For the Lord has loosed the Vintages of Wrath." 

We are singing in the ships as they carry us to fight, 
As our fathers sang before us by the camp-fires' light; 
In the wharf -light glare, 
They can hear us Over There, 
When the ships come streaming through the night. 



204 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Right across the deep Atlantic where the Lusitania 

passed, 
With the battle-flag of Yankee-land a-floating at the mast 

We are coming all the while, 

Over twenty hundred mile. 
And we're staying to the finish, to the last. ^ 

We are many — we are one — and we're in it overhoad, 
We are coming as an army that has seen its women dead, 

And the old Rebel Yell 

Will be loud above the shell 
When we cross the top together, seeing red. 

— From Blackwood's Magazine 



SOLDIERS ALL 

DANIEL M. HENDERSON 

** Fisherman, mend your nets 
For the day's trawling! 

Cod and menhaden run 
Thick for your hauling!" 

*' Yes, hut beyond the mists 
Bugles are calling!'' 

"Writer, the world would count 

You with its sages ! 
Far from the shock of war. 

Toil for the ages!" 
''No — / must write my life 

On Freedom's pages!'' 



SOLDIERS ALL 2©5 

** Surgeon, you cannot go! 

Hear the sick pleading ! 
'T is not for such as you 

Bullets are speeding!" 
''Hush — for I see in France 

Liberty bleeding ! " 

"Mother, keep back your lad, 

Tho his mates scorn him ! 
Better their jeers than that 

Your heart should mourn him!" 
''Cease — for his country' s cause 

My arms have borne him!'' 

"Pastor, now more and more 

Men need your preaching! 
How shall they find their souls 

If you stop teaching?" 
" Yet, on His battle -line 

God is beseeching / " 



COMRADES IN A COMMON CAUSE i . 

BISHOP BRENT 

We comrades in the common cause have come together 
hke sturdy Judas Maccabeus and his fellow patriots in 
the ancient story, to commit our decision to the Lord and 
place ourselves in His hands before we pitch our camp 
and go forth to battle. It were an unworthy cause that 
we could not commit to God with complete confidence. 
Today we have this confidence. 

This, I venture to say, is not merely the beginning of a 
new era, but of a new epoch. At this moment a great 
nation, well skilled in self-sacrifice, is standing by with 
deep sympathy and bidding Godspeed to another great 
nation that is making its act of self -dedication to God. 
That altar upon which we Americans are to-day laying 
our lives and our fortunes is already occupied. After 
three years Great Britain and her allies have been fight- 
ing not merely for their own laws, their own homes, their 
liberty, and all they hold sacred, but for the great com- 
monwealth of mankind. 

Today, when the United States avow their intention of 
giving themselves wholeheartedly to this great cause, 
the battle for the right assumes new proportions. A 
new power and victory — aye, a victory that is God's is 
in sight. We Americans have never been oblivious to the 
fact that the people of this country have been standing 
for the same principles which we love and for which we 
live. England, thank God, is the mother of democracy, 
and England's children come back today to pour all their 

iFrom a speech delivered April 20th, 191 7, in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
London. 

206 




Photo by 



Bishop Brent 



BRITONS AND GUESTS • 207 

experience, the experience of a century and a half of 
independent Hfe, with gratitude at the feet of their 
mother. 

Today we stand side by side with our fellows as com- 
mon soldiers in the common fight. There have been great 
quarrels in the past that were results of misunderstanding, 
but our quarrel with Germany is not based on misunder- 
standing. It is due to understanding. Just as it was 
understanding that made us break with Germany, so it 
is understanding which makes us take our place by the 
side of the Allies. It would have been impossible for us 
to do otherwise. 

This act of America has enabled her to find her' soul. 
America, which stands for democracy, must champion 
the cause of the plain people at all costs. The plain people 
most desire peace. That is what America with the Allies 
is fighting for. She thinks so much of peace that she is 
ready to pay the cost of war. Our war today is that we 
may destroy war. One thing to do with war is to hunt it 
to its death and, please God, in this war we shall achieve 
our purpose. 

BRITONS AND GUESTS! 

EDITH M. THOMAS 

We fought you once — but that was long ago! 
We fought you once, Briton hearts of oak; 

. Away from you — from parent stock — we broke. 

Be glad we did! Because from every blow 

We hiu-led in that old day a force did grow 

That now shall stead you, level stroke by stroke — 
So Heaven help us, who but late awoke. 

The charge upon our common race to know ! 



20« THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

And we will stand with you, the world to save — 

To make it safe for Freedom (as we free have been). 
Have you not seen our mutual banners wave 
As one upon the wind — a sight most brave ! . . . 
We once did fight you ev'n as next of kin 
May cleave apart, at end to closer win! 

CHRIST IN FLANDERS 

A BRITISH SOLDIER 

We had forgotten You or very nearly, 
You did not seem to touch us very nearly. 

Of cotuse we thought about You now and then 
Especially in any time of trouble, 
We know that You were good in time of trouble 

But we are very ordinary men. 

And there were always other things to think of. 
There 's lots of things a man has got to think of. 

His work, his home, his pleasure and his wife, 
And so we only thought of You on Sunday;. 
Sometimes perhaps not even on a Sunday 

Because there 's always lots to fill one's life. 

And all the while, in street or lane or byway 
In country lane, in city street or byway 

You walked among us, and we did not see. 
Your feet were bleeding, as You walked our pavements; 
How did we miss Your foot-prints on our pavements; 

Can there be other folk as blind as we? 

Now we remember over here in Flanders 
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders) 
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear, 



ONWARD* CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 209 

We never thought about You much in England 
But now that we are far away from England 
We have no doubts — we know that You are here. 

You helped us pass the jest along the trenches 
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, 

You touched its ribaldry and made it fine. 
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness. 
We're glad to think You understand our weakness. 

Somehow it seems to help us not to whine. 

We think about You kneeling in the Garden — 
Ah! God, the agony of that dread Garden; 

We know you prayed for us upon the Cross. 
If anything could make us glad to bear it 
'Twould be the knowledge, that You willed to bear it— 

Pain, death, the uttermost of human loss. 

Tho' we forgot You, You will not forget us. 
We feel so sure that You will not forget us, 

But stay with us until this dream is past— 
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon, 
Especially I think, we ask for pardon, 

And that You '11 stand beside us to the last. 



ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 

S. BARING-GOULD 

Onward, Christian soldiers. 

Marching as to war; 
With the cross of Jesus 

Going on before. 
15 



210 ~ THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Christ, the royal Master, 
Leads against the foe: 

Forward into battle. 
See, His banners go. 

Like a mighty army 

Moves the Church of God; 
Brothers, we are treading 

Where the saints have trod; 
We are not divided. 

All one body we. 
One in hope and doctrine. 

One in charity. 

Crowns and thrones may perish, 

Kingdoms wax and wane. 
But the Church of Jesus 

Constant will remain; 
Gates of hell can never 

'Gainst that Church prevail; 
We have Christ's own promise. 

And that cannot fail. 

Onward, then, ye people. 

Join our happy throng; 
Blend with ours your voices 

In the triumph-song; 
Glory, laud, and honor. 

Unto Christ the King; 
This through countless ages 

Men and angels sing. 



ENGLAND'S CASE 

HERBERT H. ASQUITH 

The War which is now shaking to its foundations the 
whole European system originated in a quarrel in which 
this country had no direct concern. We strove with all 
our might to prevent its outbreak, and when that was no 
longer possible, to limit its area. It is all important that 
it should be clearly understood when and why it was that 
we intervened. It was only when we were confronted 
with the choice between keeping and breaking solemn 
obligations, between the discharge of a binding trust and 
of shameless subservience to naked force, that we threw 
away the scabbard. We do not repent our decision. 
The issue was one which no great and self-respecting 
nation, certainly none bred and nurtured like ourselves, 
in this ancient 'home of liberty, could, without undying 
shame, have declined. We were bound by our obliga- 
tions, plain and paramount, to assert and maintain the 
threatened independence of a small and neutral state. 
Belgium had no interests of her own to serve, save and 
except the one supreme and ever-widening interest of 
every state, great or little, which is worthy of the name, 
the preservation of her integrity and of her national life. 

CANADA TO ENGLAND 

WILFRED CAMPBELL 

England, England, England, 

Girdled by ocean and skies, 
And the power of a world, and the heart of a race, 

And a hope that never dies ! 

211 



212 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY. 

England, England, England, 

Wherever a true heart beats, 
Wherever the armies of commerce flow, 
Wherever the bugles of conquest blow. 
Wherever the glories of liberty grow, 

'T is the name that the world repeats. 

He * * 

North and South and East and West, 

Wherever their triumphs be, 
Their glory goes home to the ocean-girt Isle 
Where the heather blooms and the roses smile, 

With the green Isle under her lee. 
And if ever the smoke of an alien gun 

Should threaten her iron repose. 
Shoulder to shoulder against the world, 

Face to face with her foes, 
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one, 

Where the glory of England goes. 
* * * 

Till the last great freedom is found. 

And the last great truth be taught. 
Till the last great deed be done, 

And the last great battle is fought ; 
Till the last great fighter is slain in the last great fight, 

And the war-wolf is dead in his den, 
England, breeder of hope and valour and might, 

Iron mother of men ! 

Yea, England, England, England, 

Till honour and valour are dead. 
Till the world's great cannons rust. 
Till the world's great hopes are dust^ 

Till faith and freedom be fled; 



AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND 213 

Till wisdom and justice have passed 

To sleep with those who sleep in the many-chambered 

vast, 
Till glory and knowledge are chamelled, dust in dust, 
To all that is best in the world's unrest 
In heart and mind you are wed : — 

While out from the Indian jungle 

To the far Canadian snows, 
Over the east and over the west, 
Over the worst and over the best, 
The flag of the world to its winds unfurled, 

The blood-red ensign blows. 



AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND 

ARCHIBALD T. STRONG 

By all the deeds to thy dear glory'done. 
By all the life blood spilt to serve thy need, 
By all the fettered lives thy touch hath freed. 

By all thy dream in us anew begun; 

By all the guerdon English sire to son 

Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed, 
By all thine agony, of God decreed 

For trial and strength, our fate with thine is one. 

Still dwells thy spirit in our hearts and lips, 
Honour and life we hold from none but thee. 
And if we live thy pensioners no more 

But seek a nation's might of men and ships, 
'T is but that when the world is black with war 

Thy sons may stand beside thee strong and free. 



214 THE SPIRIT OP DEMOCRACY 

INDIA TO ENGLAND 

NIZAMAT JUNG 
O England ! in thine hour of need, 
When Faith's reward and valor's meed 

Is death or glory, 
When Faith indites, with biting brand. 
Clasped in each warrior's stiffening hand, 

A nation's story; 

Though weak our hands, which fain would clasp 
The warrior's sword with warrior's grasp 

On victory's field; 
Yet turn, O mighty Mother! turn 
Unto the million hearts that burn 

To be thy shield. 

Thine equal justice, mercy, grace 
Have made a distant alien race 

A part of thee. 
'T was thine to bid their souls rejoice 
When first they heard the living voice 

Of Liberty. 

Unmindful of their ancient name, 
And lost to honor — glory — fame, 

And sunk in strife. 
Thou found them, whom thy touch hath made 
Men, and to whom thy breath conveyed 

A nobler life. 

They, whom thy love hath guarded long; 
They, whom thy care hath rendered strong 
In love and faith. 



A MESSAGE TO IRELAND 215 

Their heartstrings round thy heart entwine, 
They are, they ever will be, thine 
In life — in death. 



A MESSAGE TO IRELAND 

FLORENCE GOFF 

Listen, I 'm writin' ye, Jimmy O'Flanigan, 
Sindin' a message from over the seas ; 

Shame to ould Ireland and all of her fightin' men ! 
Faith, 't is no time to go weak in the knees. 

Shades of St. Patrick, but I must confess to ye, 
Much as I love the ould Emerald sod, 

I, Mike O'Brien, am wishin' bad cess to ye 
Shirkin' your^duty to freedom and God. 

Quit your shenanigan, with the world riot in'; 

Sure 'tis an Irishman's time to fall in; 
When the war's over thin talk about quietin' 

England's oppression, but now 't is a sin. 

Faith, 't is the Kaiser himself would be rulin' ye. 

Niver swap horses whin crossin' a stream; 
Turn a deaf ear to the traitor that's foolin' ye, 

Jimmy, belave me, 'tis no idle dream. 

Here in America, where they are feedin' us. 
Faith, there are men that the devil can't scare ; 

Ready to wallop the brute that is bleedin' us. 
Ready to follow — the devil knows where. 



2i6 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Shame to ye, shame to ye, Jimmy O'Flanigan, 
Roustin' conscription. Come on wid the b'ys; 

Let the ould Kaiser know Paddy's a man agin; 
Sure 't is ould Ireland can blacken his eyes. 

GOING HOME 

ROBERT W. SERVICE 

I 'm goin' 'ome to Blighty — ain't I glad to 'ave the chance ! 
I 'm loaded up wiv fightin', and I 've 'ad my fill o' France; 
I 'm feelin' so excited-like, I want to sing and dance, 
For I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'. 

I 'm goin' 'ome to Blighty; can you wonder as I 'm gay? 
I 've got a wound I would n't sell for 'alf a year o' pay — 
A harm that's smashed to jelly in the nicest sort o' way, 
For it takes me 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'. 

'Ow everlastin' keen Iwas on gettin' to the front! 
I'd ginger for a dozen, and I 'elped to bear the brunt; 
But Cheese and Crust! I'm crazy, now I've done me 
little stunt, 
To sniff the air of Blighty in the mawniti'. 

I 've looked upon the wine that 's white and on the wine 

that's red; 
I 've looked on cider flowin', till it fairly turned me 'ead; 
But oh, the finest scoff will be, when all is done and said, 
A pint o' Bass in Blighty in the mawnin'. 

I'm goin' back to BHghty, which I left to strafe the 'Un; 
I've fought in bloody battles, and I've 'ad a 'eap of fun; 



GOING HOME 217 

But now me flipper's busted, and I think me dooty's 
done, 
And I'll kiss me gel in Blighty in the mawnin'. 

Oh, there be furrin' lands to see, and some of 'em be fine, 
And there be furrin' gels to kiss, and scented furrin' wine ; 
But there's no land like England, and no other gel like 
mine. 
Thank Gawd for dear old Blighty in the mawnin'. 



CANADA STANDS FAST^ 

SIR ROBERT LAIRD BORDEN 

I am proud of the part that Canada has played in this 
war. It was due to the fact that her sons stood in the 
way that the path to Calais was not opened. We were 
a peaceful people, absorbed in the peaceful vocations of 
life before the outbreak of this war; but we have since 
proved that when the call came to fight we were ready 
and willing to respond. 

And now that we have made great sacrifices and have 
sent our sons to the defense of the Empire, there is one 
thing that I desire to say to you: Canada is as deter- 
mined to maintain the cause to the end as it was when 
this war began. While we all pray for peace and hope 
that it be not long deferred, so long as we in Canada have 
a voice there will be no truce, nor an inconclusive peace. 

Something depends on the principles for which this war 
has been fought, and we in Canada believe that all our 
sacrifices will have been in vain unless these principles, 
the principles for which we have fought, principles for 
civilization and right, as we understand them, are main- 
tained and are made triumphant. If those principles are 
maintained we will emerge from the war purified and 
triumphant. But if it is to mean only a truce and a prepa- . 
ration for another war, then, as far as we are concerned, 
it were much better that we had never fought at all. 

We have fought for certain principles and we raean to 
maintain them to the end. Last week I looked into the 
keen, intent faces of 10,000 Canadian soldiers within 

iProm speeches delivered by Sir Robert Laird Borden. 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood 

Sir Robert Laird Borden 



TO CANADA 219 

sound and range of the German guns. Three days ago I 
looked into the undaunted eyes of 1,000 Canadian con- 
valescents retiirned from the valley of the shadow of 
death. In the eyes and in the faces of those men I read 
only one message, that of resolute and unflinching deter- 
mination to make our cause triumphant, to preserve our 
institutions and our liberties, to maintain the unity of 
our Empire and its influence through the world. That 
message I bring to you also from the great Dominion which 
has sent those men across the sea. While the awful 
shadow of this war overhangs our Empire I shall not 
pause to speak of what may be evolved in its constitu- 
tional relations. Upon what has been built in the past, 
it is possible, in my judgment, that an even nobler and 
more enduring fabric may be erected. That structure 
must embody the autonomy of the self-governing Domin- 
ions and of the British Isles as well, but it must embody 
also the majesty and power of an Empire, and be more 
thoroughly and effectively organized for the purpose of 
preserving its own existence. 



' TO CANADA 

KATHARINE LEE BATES 

Our neighbor of the undefended bound. 

Friend of the hundred years of peace, our kin, 

Fellow adventurer on the enchanted ground 
Of the New World, must not the pain within 

Our hearts for this vast anguish of the war 
Be keenest for your pain? Is not our grief, 



THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

That aches with all bereavement, tenderest for 
The tragic crimson on your maple-leaf? 

Bitter our lot, in this world-clash of faiths, 

To stand aloof and bide our hour to serve; 
The glorious dead are living; we are wraiths. 

Dim watchers of the conflict's changing curve, 
Yet proud for hirnian valor, spirit true 

In scorn of body, manhood on the crest 
Of consecration, dearly proud for you, 

Who sped to arms like knighthood to the quest, 

From quaint Quebec to stately Montreal, 

Along the rich St. Lawrence, o'er the steep 
Roofs of the Rockies rang the bugle-call, 

And east and west, deep answering to deep, 
Your sons surged forth, the simple, stooping folk 

Of shop and wheatfield sprung to hero size 
Swiftly as e'er your northern lights awoke 

To streaming splendor quiet evening skies. 

Seek not your lost beneath the tortured sod 

Of France and Flanders, where in desperate strife 
They battled greatly for the cause of God; 

But when above the snow your heavens are rife 
With those upleaping lustres, find them there. 

Ardors of sacrifice, celestial sign, 
Aureole your angel shall forever wear, 

Praising the irresistible Divine. 



A CRY FROM THE CANADIAN HILLS 221 

A CRY FROM THE CANADIAN HILLS 

LILIAN LEVERIDGE 

Laddie, little laddie, come with me over the hills, 
Where blossom the white May lilies, and the dogwood and 

daffodils ; 
For the Spirit of Spring is calling to our spirits that love 

to roam 
Over the hills of home, laddie, over the hills of home. 

Laddie, little laddie, here 's hazel and meadow rue, 

And wreaths of the rare arbutus, a-blowing for me and 

you; 
And cherry and bilberry blossoms, and hawthorn as white 

as foam. 
We'll carry them all to Mother, laddie, over the hills at 

home. 

Laddie, little laddie, the winds have many a song, 

And blithely and bold they whistle to us as we trip along ; 

But your own little song is sweeter, your own with its 

merry trills; 
So, whistle a tune as you go, laddie, over the windy hills. 

Laddie, little laddie, 'tis time that the cows were home. 
Can you hear the klingle-klangle of their bell in the green- 
wood gloam? 
Old Rover is waiting, eager to follow the trail with you, 
Whistle a tune as you go, laddie, whistle a tune as you go. 

Laddie, little laddie, there's a flash of a bluebird's wing. 
O hush ! If we wait and listen we may hear him caroling. 



-222 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

The vesper song of the thrushes, and the plaint of the 

whip-poor-wills, 
Sweet, how sweet is the music, laddie, over the twilit hills. 

Brother, little brother, your childhood is passing by, 
And the dawn of a noble purpose I see in your thoughtful 

eye. 
You have many a mile to travel and many a task to do; 
Whistle a tune as you go, laddie, whistle a tune as you go. 

Laddie, soldier laddie, a call comes over the sea, 
A call to the best and bravest in the land of liberty, 
To shatter the despot's power, to lift up the weak that fall. 
Whistle a song as you go, laddie, to answer your country's 
call. 

Brother, soldier brother, the Spring has come back again, 

But her voice from the windy hilltops is calling your 
name in vain; 

For never shall we together 'mid the birds and the blos- 
soms roam. 

Over the hills of home, brother, over the hills of home. 

Laddie ! Laddie ! Laddie ! " Somewhere in France ' ' you 

sleep. 
Somewhere 'neath alien flowers and alien winds that weep. 
Bravely you marched to battle, nobly your life laid down, 
You unto death were faithful, laddie; yours is the victor's 

crown. 

Laddie! Laddie! Laddie! How dim is the sunshine 

grown, 
As Mother and I together speak softly in tender tone! 



THE RECKONING 223 

And the lips that quiver and falter have ever a single 

theme, 
As we list for 3^our dear, lost whistle, laddie, over the 

hills of dream. 

Laddie, beloved laddie! How soon should we cease to 

weep 
Could we glance through the golden gateway whose keys 

the angels keep! 
Yet love, our love that is deathless, can follow you where 

you roam, 
Over the hills of God, laddie, the beautiful hills of Home. 

THE RECKONING 

THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS 
Ye who reckon with England — 

Ye who sweep the seas 
Of the flag that Rodney nailed aloft 

And Nelson flung to the breeze — 
Count well your ships and your men, 

Count well your horse and your guns, 
For they who reckon with England 

Must reckon with England's sons. 

Ye who would challenge England — 

Ye who would break the might 
Of the little isle in the foggy sea 

And the lion-heart in the fight — 
Count well your horse and your swords, 

Weigh well your valour and guns. 
For they who would ride against England 

Must sabre her million sons. 



224 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Ye who"would roll to warfare 

Your hordes of peasants and slaves, 
To crush the pride of an empire 

And sink her fame in the waves — 
Test well your blood and your mettle, 

Count well your troops and your guns, 
For they who battle with England 

Must war with a Mother's sons. 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS ^ 

WOODROW WILSON' 

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the 
life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own 
also. We are partners with the rest. What affects man- 
kind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the 
nations of Europe and of Asia. 

Only when the great nations of the world have reached 
some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be funda- 
mental to their common interest, and as to some feasible 
method of acting in concert when any nation or group of 
nations seeks to disturb those fundamental things, can 
we feel that civilization is at last in a way of justifying 
its existence and claiming to be finally established. It 
is clear that nations must in the future be governed by 
the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals. 

Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of most 
of the great nations now engaged in war have made it 
plain that their thought has come to this, that the prin- 
ciple of public right must henceforth take precedence 
over the individual interests of particular nations, and 
that the nations of the world must in some way band them- 
selves together to see that right prevails as against any 
sort of selfish aggression; that henceforth alliance must 
not be set up against alliance, understanding against 
understanding, but that there must be a common agree- 
ment for a common object, and that at the heart of that 
common object must lie the inviolable rights of peoples 
and of mankind. 



1 From an address to the League to Enforce Peace, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 

16 225 



226 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

The nations of the world have become each other's 
neighbors. It is to their interest that they should under- 
stand .each other. In order that they may understand 
each other it is imperative that they should agree to 
cooperate in a common cause, and that they should so 
act that the guiding principle of that common cause shall 
be even-handed and impartial justice. 

If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate a 
movement for peace among the nations now at war, I 
am sure that the people of the United States would wish 
their Government to move along these lines : 

First such a settlement with regard to their own 
immediate interests as the belHgerents may agree upon. 
We have nothing material of any kind to ask for our- 
selves, and we are in no sense or degree parties to the 
present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and its 
future guarantees. 

Second, an universal association of the nations to main- 
tain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for 
the common and unhindered use of all the nations of the 
world, and to prevent any war begun contrary to treaty 
covenants or without warning and full submission of the 
causes to the opinion of the world'— a virtual guarantee 
of territorial integrity and political independence. 



A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR 

ALFRED NOYES 

Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea, 
Whose footsteps are not known, 

Tonight a world that turned from Thee 
Is waiting — at Thy Throne. 



AMERICA TO FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN 227 

The towering Babels that we raised 

Where scoffing sophists brawl, 
The little Antichrists we praised — 

The night is on them all. 

The fool hath said . . . The fool hath said . . . 

And we, who deemed him wise. 
We who believed that Thou wast dead, 

How should we seek Thine eyes? 

How should we seek to Thee for power 

Who scorned Thee yesterday? 
How should we kneel, in this dread hour? 

Lord, teach us how to pray ! 

Grant us the single heart, once more. 

That mocks no sacred thing, 
The Sword of Truth our fathers wore 

When Thou wast Lord and King. 

Let darkness unto darkness tell 

Our deep unspoken prayer, 
For, while our souls in darkness dwell. 

We know that Thou art there. 



AMERICA TO FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN 

HAROLD T. PULSIFER 

MASTER SIGNAL ELECTRICIAN, SIGNAL CORPS, U. S. N. A. 

France ! Britain ! to your stalwart sons 
We owe our hearthstones undefiled, 
Our living cities : — to your guns 
The laughter of each little child. 



228 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

France ! Britain ! in the deadly pall 
That hangs athwart your eastern skies, 
We see the measure of our call, 
The need of holy sacrifice. 

France ! Britain ! in your debt we stand 
As never nation stood before, — 
Henceforth the honor of our land 
Speaks only where our cannons roar. 

In gilded word and burnished phrase 
There is no balm for blood that flows 
From those who through infernal days 
Fight liberty's eternal foes. 

Before the judgment seat of God 
Ten thousand hopes will not outweigh 
One single square of bloody sod 
Held from the Hun in red affray. 

Late to the battlefield we come 
Unready, tortured with the shame 
Of seeing brothers grim and dumb 
Dying, — where we should feel the fiame. 

France ! Britain ! when the stars look down 
. Upon the last great battle place, 

Pray God we may have won our crown, — 
The right to meet you face to face ! 



THE CHALLENGE 229 

THE CHALLENGE 

H. T. SUDDRITH 

Across the sea a challenge came 

With roar of guns and flash of flame ! 

'Twixt Might and Right the line was drawn 

And freedom's last great flght was on! 

America that challenge heard ! 

Her answer all the world has stirred ! 

See ! Streaming on the winds of France 

Her flag and allied flags advance ! 

Nor will those allied flags be furled 

Till freedom triumphs through the world. 



THE HOLY QUEST 1 

RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE 

There are those who openly mock or grimly smile at 
our national program, maintaining that the end of this 
war is bound to be evil, not only because war ever brings 
curses in its train, but because we are certain to surrender 
some of the most precious gains of the democratic life, 
howbeit we have set forth to overwhelm them that are 
democracy's foes. I do not so believe, for my own is too 
great a trust in the power of my countrymen to achieve 
their purposes. We have set out upon a high and holy 
quest. We will not basely stoop in our pursuit thereof. 
We who enter the war without intent to do evil but rather 
to release them that are in bondage shall not so falter as 
to enthrall ourselves. If we can war without hatred of 
the enemy, can we not triumph without hurt to ourselves ? 
We will no more than to serve the world and not to dis- 
serve ourselves through deserting the ideals which are 
the soul of America. 

Yet another reason there is for resolving that we shall 
not lose America as we strive to win the war. The war 
must and will be won by them who are ready to lay down 
their life to the end that victory may crown our arms. 
Whilst these set forth to win the war, dare we do less 
than determine that the aims of America on behalf of 
which they wage war, on behalf of which they are ready 
to dare and to die, shall not be defeated at home whilst 
through their service and sacrifice its arms triumph 
abroad? Whilst these sacrifice themselves for America, 



1 From an address delivered in 191 7 in the Free Synagogue. New York 
250 



Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 



THE HOLY QUEST 231 

we must not sacrifice America on any ground whatsoever. 
We ask the young men of America to win the war. Let 
it not become needful for them to demand of us that we, 
who are to Hve amid security because of their service 
and their sacrifice, shall not lose their and our America. 

Not very long ago, I was asked to have part in a "Wake 
Up America" demonstration from which I absented my- 
self because tawdryness and vulgarity have no part in 
our international strife. The methods of the circus ring 
ought not to be associated even remotely with the most 
sombre event in human history. Wake Up America ! — 
not only to the need of hard fighting which is inevitable, 
but the duty of preserving inviolate the high aims of this 
war. Wake Up America ! — and wage a war without 
hatred; without bitterness, without vindictiveness, a 
war without indemnity exacted from others outwardly 
or from ourselves inwardly. 

Wake Up America to the nobleness of our part in the 
strife not for profit to ourselves nor yet for punishment 
of others, but for the liberation of all peoples, including 
above all the liberation of the peoples of the German 
Empire from Csesarism. 

Wake Up America ! — to the greatness and the nobleness 
of our quest, the making secure forever of the sanctity 
of international covenant and the rights of smaller nations, 
of democracy for all the world. 

Wake Up America and win the war for the world, but 
hold and keep holy America's soul. 



232 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

HANDS ALL ROUND 

ALFRED TENNYSON 
* * * * 

Gigantic daughter of the West, 

We drink to thee across the flood, 
We know thee and we love thee best. 

For art thou not of British blood? 
Should war's mad blast again be blown, 

Permit not thou the tyrant powers 
To fight thy mother here alone. 

But let thy broadsides roar with ours. 
Hands all round ! 

God the tyrant's cause confound! 
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends, 

And the great name of England, round and round. 

rise, our strong Atlantic sons. 

When war against our freedom springs ! 
O speak to Europe through your guns ! 

They can be understood by kings. 
You must not mix our Queen with those 

That wish to keep their people fools; 
Our freedom's foemen are her foes, 

She comprehends the race she rules. 
Hands all round! 

God the tyrant's cause confound! 
To our dear kinsmen in the West, my friends, 

And the great name of England, roundjand round. 



CARRY ON! 233 

CARRY ON! 

JOHN OXENHAM 

"Carry on, Brave Hearts! Carry on!" — 
Rings, like a clarion cry, 
Our heart-felt valedictory, 
To cheer you on to victory ; — 

"Carry on, Brave Hearts! Carry on! " 
Now bear you well, and bear you high. 
Who fights for God to God draws nigh. 
And wins him immortality ; — 

"Carry on, Brave Hearts! Carry on!'' 

The night is past, day dawns at last ; — 
"Carry on. Brave Hearts! Carry on!'' 

The way is clear, the goal is near; — 
"Carry on. Brave Hearts! Carry on!" 

God's Best awaits beyond these straits; — 
"Carry on, Brave Hearts! Carry on!'' 

For Peace on Earth is at the birth ; — 
"Carry on. Brave Hearts! Carry on!" 

The fateful day is all your own, 
The Evil Thing is overthrown, 
The mighty victory is won; — 

"Carry on. Brave Hearts! Carry on! " 
Your might shall set Christ on His Throne, 
And His sweet grace in full atone 
For all that you have undergone ; — 

"Carry on, Brave Hearts! Carry on! " 



234 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

ROBERT BRIDGES 

Brothers in blood ! They who this wrong began 
To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day 
When first they challenged freemen to the fray, 

And with the Briton dared the American. 

Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man ; 
Labour and Justice now shall have their way, 
And in a League of Peace — God grant we may — 

Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan. 

Sure is our hope since he who led your nation 

Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe 
Of that high call to work the world's salvation; 
Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness 
In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law, 
Freedom and Honour and sweet Lovingkindness. 

THE WESTERN LAND 

CAROLINE HAZARD 

Great Western Land whose mighty breast 
Between two oceans finds its rest, . 
Begirt with storm on either side, 
And washed by strong Pacific tide; 
The knowledge of thy wondrous birth 
Gave balance to the rounded earth. 
In sea of darkness thou didst stand 
Now first in light, my Western land. 

In thee the olive and the vine 
Unite with hemlock and with pine ; 



THE WESTERN LAND 235 

In purest white the Southern rose 
Repeats the spotless Northern snows. 
Around th3/ zone the belt of maize 
Rejoices in the sun's hot rays, 
And all that Nature could command 
She heaped on thee, my Western land. 

My Western land, whose touch makes free, 
Advance to perfect liberty ! 
Till right shall make thy sovereign might, 
And every wrong be crushed from sight. 
Behold thy day, thy time is here. 
Thy people great, with naught to fear, 
God hold thee in His strong right hand. 
My well beloved Western land. 



A MESSAGE TO AMERICA i 

ROMAIN ROLLAND 

My faith is great in the high destinies of America. And 
it is clear to me that the events of today make more urgent 
than before that these be reaHzed. On our old Continent, 
civilization is menaced. It becomes America's solemn 
duty to uphold the wavering torch. 

You have great advantages over the European nations. 
You are free of traditions. You are free of that vast 
load of thought, of sentiment, of secular obsession under 
which the Old World groans. The intellectual fixed ideas, 
the dogmas of politics and art that grip us, are unknown 
to you. You may go forward, unhampered, to your 
future; while we, in Europe, sacrifice ours, daily, to 
quarrels and rancors and ambitions that should be dead. 
Europe has found no better channel for its genius than 
to revive these quarrels; to submit, over and again, to 
the tyrannies that they impose. And each time that 
Europe attempts to solve them, it succeeds merely in 
strengthening the web that binds it. Where it should 
strike clear of its shackles, it forges still more iron meshes. 
Like the Atrides, it works out its tragedy under a curse. 
And like them, again, it prays for its release in vain, to 
some indifferent god. 

In conclusion, writers and thinkers of America, we 
expect of you two things. We ask that you defend the 
cause of Liberty; that you defend its conquests; and that 
you increase them. And by Liberty I mean both political 
and intellectual liberty. I mean the 'ncessant rebirth 

1 From an address delivered in 19 17. 
236 




Photo by Brown Bros. 



ROMAIN ROLLAND 



AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL 237 

and replenishment of life that it enfolds. I mean the 
wide River of Spirit that never stagnates, but flows on 
forever. 

Also, we ask that you so master your lives as to give 
to the world a new ideal for lack of which it bleeds — an 
ideal, not of section and tradition, but of Harmony. 
You must harmonize all of the dreams and liberties and 
thoughts brought to your shores by all your peoples. 
You must make of your culture a symphony that shall 
in a true way express your brotherhood of individuals, of 
races, of cultures banded together. You must make real 
the dream of an integrated entire humanity. 

You are fortunate. Your life is young and abundant. 
Your land is vast and free for the discovery of your works. 
You are at the beginning of your journey, at the dawn Of 
your day. There is in you no weariness of the Yesterdays • 
no clutterings of the Past. 

Behind you, alone, the elemental Voice of a great 
pioneer, in whose message you may well find an almost 
legendary omen of your task to come — your Homer : 
Walt Whitman. 

Surge et Age [Rise and Act]. 



AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL^ 

KATHARINE LEE BATES 

O beautiful for spacious skies. 
For amber waves of grain, 

For purple mountain majesties 
Above the fruited plain ! 



238 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

America ! America ! 
God shed His grace on thee 
And crown thy good with brotherhood 
From sea to shining sea! 

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, 

Whose stern, impassioned stress 
A thoroughfare for freedom beat 

Across the wilderness ! 
America ! America ! 

God mend thine every flaw, 
Confirm thy soul in self-control. 

Thy liberty in law ! 

beautiful for heroes proved 

In liberating strife, 
Who more than self their country loved, 

And mercy more than life ! 
America ! America ! 

May God thy gold refine. 
Till all success be nobleness, 

And every gain divine ! 

O beautiful for patriot dream 

That sees beyond the years 
Thine alabaster cities gleam 

Undimmed by hiiman tears ! 
America! America! 

God shed His grace on thee 
And crown thy good with brotherhood 

From sea to shining sea! 



WE SHALL REMEMBER THEM ^39 

WE SHALL REMEMBER THEM 

JAMES TERRY WHITE 

They sleep beneath no immemorial yews; 

Their resting place no temple arches hem; 
No blazoned shaft or graven tablet woos 

Men's praise — and yet, we shall remember them. 

The unforgetting clouds shall drop their tears; 

The winds, in ceaseless lamentation, wail, 
For God's white Knights are lying on their biers, 

Who pledged their service to restore the Grail. 

They gave their lives to make the whole world free; 

They recked not to what flag they were assigned; 
The starry Banner, Cross, or Fleur-de-lis — 

Their sacrifice was made for all mankind. 

For them the task is done, the strife is stilled; 

No more shall care disturb, nor zeal condemn; 
And when the larger good has been fulfilled. 

In coming years we shall remember them. 

How can the world their deeds forget? In France 
White crosses everywhere lift pallid hands. 

Like silent sentinels with sword and lance. 
To keep their memory safe for other lands. 

What need have they for holy sepulture? 

Within the hearts of men is hallowed ground — 
A sanctuary where they rest secure, 

And with Love's immortalit}^ are crowned. 

And far-off voices of the future sing, 

"They shall remain in memory's diadem"; 

And winds of promise still are whispering 

That same refrain, "We shall remember them." 



KEEP THE ROAD OF DEMOCRACY OPEN^ 

WILLIAM E. BORAH 

What we have determined in this crisis, as I under- 
stand it, is that we will keep the road of democracy open. 
No one shall close it. If any nation shall hereafter rise 
to the sublime requirement of self-government and choose 
to go that way, it shall have the right to do so. Above 
all things we have determined, cost what it may in treasure 
and blood, that this experiment here upon this Western 
Continent shall justify the faith of its builders, that there 
shall remain here in all the integrity of its powers, neither 
wrenched nor marred by the passions of war from within 
nor hiunbled nor dishonored by military power from 
without, the Republic of the fathers; that since the chal- 
lenge has been thrown down that this is a war unto death 
between two opposing theories of government we are 
determined that whatever else happens as a result of this 
war this form of organization, this theory of state, this 
last great hope, this fruition of one hundred thirty years 
of struggle and toil, "shall not perish from the earth." 

We can and should keep the issue clear of all selfish 
and imperialistic ambitions, but the issue itself cannot be 
compromised. Cost what it may in treasure and blood, 
the burden, as if by fate, has been laid upon us, and we 
must meet it manfully and successfully. To compromise 
is to acknowledge defeat. The policies of Frederick the 
Great which would make of all human souls mere cogs in 
a vast military machine, and the policies of Washington 
which would make government the expression and the 

I From a speech delivered March i8, 1918. 

240 



KEEP THE ROAD OF DEMOCRACY OPEN 241 

instniment of popular power are contending for suprem- 
acy on the battlefields of Europe. Just that single, 
simple, stupendous issue, beside which all other issues in 
this war are trivial, must have a settlement as clear and 
conclusive as the settlement at Rtmnymede or Yorktown. 
To lose sight of this fact is to miss the supreme pur- 
pose of the war, and to permit it to be embarrassed or 
belittled by questions of territory is to betray the cause 
of civilization. And to fail to settle it clearly and con- 
clusively is to fail in the most vital and sublime task ever 
laid upon a people. 

We need not prophesy now when victory will come. 
Neither is it profitable to speculate how it will come. If 
it is a real and not a sham peace, we will have no trouble 
in recognizing it when it does come. Whether it shall 
come in the bloody and visible triumph of arms or, as 
we hope, through the overthrow and destruction of 
militarism by the people of the respective countries, we 
do not know. But that it will come we most confidently 
believe. Indeed, if the principles of right and the pre- 
cepts of liberty are not a myth, we know it will come. 

It has been said by some one that it was not possible 
for Napoleon to win at Waterloo, not on account of 
Wellington, not on account of Bluecher, but on account 
of the unchanging laws of liberty and justice. Let us 
call something of this faith to our own contest. Let us 
go forward in the belief that it is not possible in the morn- 
ing of the twentieth century of the Christian civilization 
for militarism, for brute force, to triumph. 

We cannot lose. We must win. The only question is 
whether we shall, through efficiency and concerted action, 
win without unnecessary loss of life, unnecessary waste 

17 



242 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

of treasure, or whether we shall, through lack of unity in 
spirit and purpose, win only after fearful and unnecessary 
sacrifices. 

It has often been said since the war began that a repub- 
lic cannot make war. I trample the doctrine under my 
feet. I scorn the faithless creed as the creed of cowards 
and traitors. A republic can make war. It can make 
war successfully and triumphantly and remain a republic 
every hour of the conflict. The genius who presided over 
the organization of this Republic, whose impressive force 
was knit into every fibre of our national organization, 
knew that though devoted to peace the time would come 
when the Republic would have to make war. Over and 
over again he solemnly warned his countrymen to be ever 
ready and always prepared. He intended, therefore, 
that this Republic should make war and make war 
effectively, and the Republic which Washington framed 
and baptized with his love can make war. Let these 
faithless recreants cease to preach their pernicious 
doctrine. 

, This theory, this belief that a self-governing people 
cannot make war without forfeiting their freedom and 
their form of government is vicious enough to have been 
kenneled in some foreign clime. A hundred million people 
knit together by the ties of a common patriotism, united 
in spirit and purpose, conscious of the fact that their 
freedom is imperiled, and exerting their energies and 
asserting their powers through the avenues and machinery 
of a representative Republic is the most masterful enginery 
of war yet devised by man. It has in it a power, an ele- 
ment of strength, which no military power of itself can 
bring into effect. 



RESURREXIT 243 

The American soldier, a part of the Hfe of his nation, 
imbued with devotion to his country, has something in 
him that no system of mere miHtary training and disci- 
pHne as appHed to automatons of an absolute Government 
can ever give. The most priceless heritage which this 
war will leave to a war-torn and weary world is the 
demonstrated fact that a free people of a free Government 
can make war successfully and triumphantly, can defy 
and defeat militarism and preserve through it all their 
independence, their freedom, and the integrity of their 
institutions. 

RESURREXIT 

(Paris, Easter, 191 7) 

GRACE ELLERY CHANNING 

' * Three days and nights ' ' they watched their sleeping Lord : 

But we — three years of days 

We have not taken our hands off from the sword. 

Nor our eyes from her face. 

Others might sleep : we loving most, have kept 

Vigil stem soldiers keep : 

The terror walked in darkness, and She slept 

When it was death to sleep, — 

When it was shame. 

We have not ceased to call upon her name, 

To watch — to fight — to pray ; 

Now let her late-awakened take our place ; 

Yes, let them have their day. 

And we our sleep ; 

We have not slept, so long, for her love's sake, 

But now — she is awake. 

Awake: and all her stars point out the way! 



244 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Sleep — did I say? 

Rather our eyes shall their full rapture take, 

Nor yet the full heart break 

Beholding how her Angel rolls away 

The years of our despair, 

And at her first word uttered on the air, 

How the glad, generous nations run to greet 

Her coming hands and feet. 

What matters now what mortal griefs may come. 

What agonies to bear — 

When Freedom's brightest armies shall turn home 

She will be marching there ! 

THE ROAD TO FRANCE 

DANIEL M. HENDERSON 

Thank God our liberating lance 

Goes flaming on the way to France ! 

To France— the trail the Gurkhas found! 

To France — old England's rallying ground! 

To France — the path the Russians strode ! 

To France — the Anzacs' glory road! 

To France — where our Lost Legion ran 

To fight and die for God and Man! 

To France — with every race and breed 

That hates Oppression's brutal creed! 

Ah, France — how could our hearts forget 
The path by which came Lafayette? 
How could the haze of doubt hang low 
Upon the road to Rochambeau? 
How was it that we missed the way 
Brave Joffre leads us along to-day? 
At last, thank God! at last we see 



THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH 245 

There is no tribal Liberty ! 
No beacon lighting just our shores ! 
No freedom guarding but our doors ! 
The flame she kindled for our sires 
Burns now in Europe's battle fires ! 
The soul that led our fathers west 
Turns back to free the world's oppressed. 
Allies, you have not called in vain! 
We share your conflict and your pain ! 

''Old Glory," through new stains and rents, 
Partakes of freedom's sacraments. 
Across the red, shell-blasted turf 
We drive the invader and his serf ! 
Last come, we will be last to stay — 
Till right has had her crowning day! 
Replenish, comrades, from our veins. 
The blood the sword of despot drains. 
And make our eager sacrifice 
Part of that freely-rendered price 
You pay to lift humanity — 
You pay to make our brothers free ! 
See, with what proud hearts we advance 
To France. 



THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH 

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE 

Men of the Twenty-first 

Up by the Chalk Pit Wood, 
Weak with our wounds and our thirst, 

Wanting our sleep and our food, 



246 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

After a day and a night — 

God, shall we ever forget ! 
Beaten and broke in the fight, 

But, sticking it — sticking it yet. 
Trying to hold the line. 

Fainting and spent and done. 
Always the thud and the whine, 

Always the yell of the Hun ! 
Northumberland, Lancaster, York, 

Durham and Somerset, 
Fighting alone, worn to the bone. 

But sticking it — sticking it yet. 

Never a message of hope ! 

Never a word of cheer ! 
Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept slope. 

With the dull dead plain in our rear. 
Always the whine of the shell. 

Always the roar of its burst. 
Always the tortures of hell, 

As waiting and wincing we cursed 
Our luck and the guns and the Boche, 

When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!" 
And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front for 
the Guards!" 

And the Guards came through. 

Our throats they were parched and hot, 
But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers! 

Irish and Welsh and Scot, 
Coldstream and Grenadiers. 

Two brigades, if you please. 
Dressing as straight as a hem, 



THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH 247 

We — we were down on our knees, 

Praying for us and for them! 
Lord, I could speak for a week, 

But how could you understand ! 
How should your cheeks be wet, 

Such feelin 's don't come to you. 
But when can me or my mates forget. 

When the Guards came through ? 

"Five yards left extend!" 

It passed from rank to rank. 
Line after line with never a bend, 

And a touch of the London swank. 
A trifle of swank and dash. 

Cool as a home parade, 
Twinkle and glitter and flash, 

Flinching never a shade. 
With the shrapnel right in their face 

Doing their Hyde Park stunt, 
Keeping their swing at an easy pace, 

Arms at the trail, eyes front ! 
Man, it was great to see ! 

Man, it was fine to do ! 
It 's a cot and a hospital ward for me. 
But I '11 tell 'em in Blighty, wherever I be. 

How the Guards came through. 

From the London Times 



WORLD RECONSTRUCTION 1 

OSCAR S. STRAUS 

The reconstruction of the world after this war will be 
our concern, but it will be urged that the Monroe Doctrine 
forbids us to take part in European concerns. Reading 
Monroe's Doctrine in the light of changed conditions, we 
find there a warrant, if not a duty, even in its language 
for our country's participation in the reconstruction of 
the world. 

The language is : "In the wars of the European powers, 
in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken 
any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. 
It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced 
that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense.'' 
Is it not clear that if the doctrine of might should prevail 
and the policy of militarism triumph, that the power of 
defense would be the only protection that nations would 
have against one another, and that the Machiavellian 
doctrine of the necessity of States would be the final arbiter 
of the rights of States? If this be true, does it not clearly 
become our duty, ngt only primarily in our own interests, 
but secondarily in the interests of the world, to insist upon 
taking part in reestablishing upon a firmer basis the 
safeguards of international law, without which treaties 
can have no value? 

While "righteousness exalteth a nation," the present 
war gives incontrovertible proof that righteousness will 
not protect a nation unless all other nations are likewise 

1 From a speech^delivered before the National Institute of Social 
Sciences on April 28, 1916. 

248 




Photo by Brown Bros. 



Oscar Straus 



THE UNIVERSAL PEACE 249 

-exalted by righteousness. When that time arrives we 
shall have reached the millenium, which from present 
indications is sufficiently remote to justify a search for 
ways and means that will serve the purpose of the world 
in the intervening time. 

It is to be hoped that out of the extreme suffering and 
sacrifice that this war imposes there may arise supreme 
wisdom among the nations. Either there will be a new 
day or a darker night ; all depends upon how this war will 
end and what bulwarks the nations will erect against 
future cataclysms such as we are now witnessing. In 
conclusion, let me repeat, America is as much concerned 
in the world's peace as the [other] nations at war. We 
must take a part in the reconstruction. Norman Angell 
significantly says that if we do not mix in European 
affairs Europe will mix in our affairs. We owe it to our- 
selves, to humanity and to the world to lend our best 
efforts and to make our fullest contribution to that recon- 
struction which must come. 

JUDGMENT DAY 

JOHN OXENHAM 

The nations are in the proving ; 
Each day is Judgment Day; 
And the peoples He finds wanting 
Shall pass — by the Shadowy Way. 

THE UNIVERSAL PEACE 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

For I dipt into the future, far as.himian eye could see. 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that 
would be : 



250 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic 

sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 

bales; 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a 

ghastly dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central 

blue ; 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind 

rushing warm. 
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the 

thunder-storm; 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags 

were furl'd 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful 

realm in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. 

— From '' Locksley Hall" 




Photo by Koehne 



John Timothy Stone 



THE YEAR BEFORE US 

JOHN TIMOTHY STONE 

Our nation has entered the great world strife for free- 
dom, Hberty and right, taking the same stand for the 
world which she took for herself in 1776, joining with the 
nations of the earth which stand for liberty of conscience 
and righteous freedom, and saying to the enemy of God 
and man, "Thus far shalt thou go, but no farther." 

No selfish motive has inspired our nation, as voiced in 
the Christian message of our President: "A supreme 
moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have 
been opened and they see the hand of God is laid upon the 
nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, 
only if they rise to the clear heights of his own justice and 
mercy." 

We are to "stand fast in the faith." We are to "quit 
ourselves like men and be strong." We are to endure 
hardness as good soldiers, and with it all we are to do our 
part to bring to a great sinning, suffering, sickened world 
the meaning of those words of the angel to the shepherds : 
"Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall 
be to all people, for unto you is bom this day in the city 
of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." The 
"peace, good will to men" will result. 

In all this strife we are following The Master. "For 
the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." Some 
can minister with the sword,^ in destroying the usurping 
power of the enemy. As that enemy took the sword, so 
shall they perish with the sword. As the Master said to 

251 



252 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Peter: "For all they that take the sword shall perish 
with the sword." They took it against helpless Belgium. 
They have advanced with it that they might dominate 
the world. With that sword they shall perish, as Chris- 
tian soldiers minister therewith. 

We must literally give oux lives "a ransom for many." 
The Saviour of man was willing to suffer and die. We 
must be willing to suffer and die, if need be, for a great 
cause that will free the world and hasten the coming of 
the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of mankind. We must 
pray and serve, watch and fight. 

There is no one great note which our nation needs at 
this moment more than the clear, unfaltering note that 
Christ is in this strife, "not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." 

Crowns and thrones may perish, 

Kingdoms wax and wane, 

But the Church of Jesus constant will remain. 

This letter could not come to you from my heart unless 
I spoke clearly my conviction, as patriot as well as pastor, 
in all that I believe to be the strong and stirring note of 
Him who shed His own blood for us, and thus took life 
that we might live. 

Let us look forward with the joyful faith of those who 
are willing to experience for Him, to the fullest degree, all 
that He sends, believing that He is "able to do exceedingly 
abundantly, above all that we ask or think, even according 
to the power that worketh in us." May this, year hold 
for us as a nation and as individuals, the victory of arms 
and faith, as right triumphs over might; and justice, 
mercy and peace unitedly herald the coming of a better 
day. 



GOD SAVE OUR SPLENDID MEN 253 

LORD, GIVE ME A PLACE 

Lord, give me a place in the world's great fight. 
The fight for the good and the true; 
A place where the wrong outrivals the right. 
And there 's a soldier's work to do. 

Help me to grapple some monster wrong 
That baffles the good and true, 
With a white-hot heart, and a tireless song, 
And a far hope ever in view. 

Hold fast my gaze to that gleaming height. 
Lest urged by reproach or applause, 
I battle more from lust of fight 
Than love of a Christlike cause. 

And when with earth and its strife I 'm through, 
Let me leave it a safer place ; 
With a clearer field for the good and true, 
And the kingdom of love and grace. 



GOD SAVE OUR SPLENDID MEN 

Tune : America 

God save our splendid men, 
Send th^m safe home again 

God save our men. 
Make them victorious, 
Patient and chivalrous. 
They are so dear to us, 

God save our men. 



254 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

God keep our own dear men, 
From every stain of sin, 

God keep our men. 
When Satan would allure, 
When tempted keep them pure, 
Be their protection sure — 

God keep our men. 

God hold our precious men. 
And love them to the end, 

God hold our men. 
Held in Thine arms so strong. 
To Thee they all belong, 
Held safe from every wrong, 

God hold our men. 



THE RED CROSS 1 
The World's Greatest Fraternal Organization 

WOODROW WILSON 1 

I have not come here to-night to review for you the 
work of the Red Cross. I have come here simply to say 
a few words to you as to what it all seems to me to 
mean. It means a great deal. 

There are two duties with which we are face to face. 
The first duty is to win the war, and the second duty, 
that goes hand in hand with it, is to win it greatly and 
worthily, showing the real quality of our power not only, 
but the real quality of our purpose and of ourselves. Of 
course, the first duty, the duty that we must keep in 
the foreground of our thought until it is accomplished, is 
to win the war. 

But behind all this grim purpose lies the opportunity 
to demonstrate not only force, which will be demonstrated 
to the utmost, but the opportunity to demonstrate 
character, and it is that opportunity that we have most 
conspicuously in the work of the Red Cross. Not that 
our men in arms do not represent our character, for they 
do; and it is a character which those who see and realize 
appreciate and admire, but their duty is the duty of force. 
The duty of the Red Cross is the duty of mercy and 
succor and friendship. 

Have you formed a picture in your imagination of 
what this war is doing for us and for the world? In my 
own mind I am convinced that not a hundred years of 

1 From the speech dehvered in New York May i8, 1918, at the 
opening of the Red Cross drive. 

255 



256 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

peace could have knitted this Nation together as this 
single year of war has knitted it together, and, better even 
than that if possible, it is knitting the world together. 
Look at the picture: In the center of the scene four 
nations engaged against the world, and at every point of 
vantage showing that they are seeking selfish aggrandize- 
ment; and against them twenty- three governments 
representing the greater part of the population of the 
world drawn together into a new sense of community 
of interest, a new sense of community of purpose, a new 
sense of unity of life. 

The Secretary of War told me an interesting incident 
the other day. He said when he was in Italy a member 
of the Italian Government was explaining to him the 
many reasons why Italy felt near to the United States. 
He said, '* If you want to try an interesting experiment go 
up to any one of these troop trains and. ask in English 
how many of them have been in America, and see what 
happens." He tried the experiment. He went up to a 
troop train and he said, ''How many of you boys have 
been in America," and he said it seemed to him as if half 
of them sprang up and said: ''Me from San Francisco," 
" Me from New York — all over." There was part of the 
heart of America in the Italian Army — people that had 
been knitted to us by association, who knew us, who 
had lived among us, who had worked shoulder to shoulder 
with us, and now, friends of America, were fighting for 
their native Italy. 

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the 
world together. And this intimate contact of the great 
Red Cross with the peoples who are suffering the terrors 
and deprivations of this war is going to be one of the 



THE RED CROSS 257 

greatest instrumentalities of friendship that the world 
ever knew, and the center of the heart of it all, if we sus- 
tain it properly, will be this land that we so dearly love. 

My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty 
finds a man's soul as no kind of work can ever find it. 
You can not give anything to the Government of the 
United States, it will not accept it. There is a law of 
Congress against accepting even services without pay. 
The only thing that the Government will accept is a loan, 
and duties performed; but it a great deal better to give 
than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for giving 
is the American Red Cross. Down in your hearts you 
can not take very much satisfaction in the last analysis 
in lending money to the Government of the United 
States, because the interest which you draw will burn 
your pockets. It is a commercial transaction. But when 
you give, something of your heart, something of your 
soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, particularly 
when it is given in such form that it never can come back 
by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know, there is 
the old cynical definition of gratitude, as ''the lively 
expectation of favors to come." Well, there is no expec- 
tation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These 
things are bestowed in order that the world may be a 
fitter place to live in, that men may be succored, that 
homes may be restored, that suffering may be relieved, 
that the face of the earth may have the blight of destruc- 
tion taken away from it, and that wherever force goes, 
there shall go mercy and helpfulness. 

Think what we have here! We call it the American 
Red Cross, but it is merely a branch of a great inter- 
national organization, which is not only recognized by 
18 



258 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

the statutes of each of the civiHzed governments of the 
world, but is recognized by international agreement and 
treaty as the recognized and accepted instrumentality 
of mercy and succor. We are members, by being mem- 
bers of the American 'Red Cross, of a great fraternity and 
comradeship which extends all over the world, and this 
cross which these ladies bore to-day is an emblem of 
Christianity itself. 

It fills my imagination to think of the women all over 
this country who are busy to-night and are busy every 
night and every day doing the work of the Red Cross, 
busy with a great eagerness to find out the most service- 
able thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the old 
frivolities of their social relationships, ready to curtail 
the duties of the household in order that they may con- 
tribute to this common work that all their hearts are 
engaged in, and in doing which their hearts become 
acquainted with each other. When you think of this, 
you realize how the people of the United States are being 
drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart 
is being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but 
for the service of civilians where they suffer and are lost 
in a maze of distresses and distractions. And you have, 
then, this noble picture of justice and mercy as the two 
servants of liberty. For only where men are free do they 
think the thoughts of comradeship; only where they are 
free do they think the thoughts of sympathy; only where 
they are free are they mutually helpful; only where they 
are free do they realize their dependence upon one another 
and their comradeship in a common interest and common 
necessity. 

If you could read some of the touching dispatches 



BEHIND THE GUNS 259 

which come through official channels (for even through 
those channels there come voices of humanity that are 
infinitely pathetic); if you could catch some of those 
voices that speak the utter longing of oppressed and help- 
less peoples all over the world, to hear something like the 
Battle Hymn of the Republic, to hear the feet of the 
great hosts of Liberty coming to set them free, to set their 
minds free, set their lives free, set their children free-— you 
would know what comes into the heart of those who are 
trying to contribute all the brains and power they have to 
this great enterprise of Liberty. I simimon you to the 
comradeship. I summon you to say how much and how 
sincerely and how unanimously you sustain the heart of 
the world. 

BEHIND THE GUNS 

HENRY EDWARD WARNER 

There are three who stand behind the guns, there are 

three who bear the load — 
There is one who stands behind the three, to feel the 

stinging goad; 
And one of the three is the soldier brave, and one is the 

girl who slips 
So quietly in by the bed, and one is the man who builds 

the ships. 
And these are the three who bear the load, and the other 

one is she 
Who stays and prays, and who weeps and hopes for the 

weal of the other three — 
And she is the Woman who stays and prays when the 

voice of duty calls 
The Boy in Khaki, the Girl in White and the Man in the 

Overalls ! 



26o THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

And one^shall go to the battle line with a song of conquest 

free, 
And one shall tenderly feel a pulse where the heroes sick 

may be, 
And one shall hammer and saw and calk the ship that 

must ride the waves 
To carry the two to their work of love, where shells blast 

cratered graves ! 
And the other one, she shall weave and weep, yet smile 

through her gathering tears — 
For the Mother-love and the Mother-pride shall conquer 

her Mother-tears; 
And Three and One, they shall batter down fair Liberty's 

prison walls — 
The Boy in Khaki, the Girl in White, and the Man in the 

Overalls ! 

THE RED CROSS SPIRIT SPEAKS 

JOHN H. FINLEY 

Wherever war, with its red woes. 
Or flood, or fire, or famine goes, 

There, too, go I; 
If earth in any quarter quakes 
Or pestilence its ravage makes. 

Thither I fly. 

I go wherever men may dare, 
I go wherever woman's care 

And love can live. 
Wherever strength and skill can bring 
Surcease to human suffering, 

Or solace give. 



GREY KNITTING 261 

I helped upon Haldora's shore; 
With Hospitaller Knights I bore 

The first red cross ; 
I was the Lady of the Lamp ; 
I saw in Solferino's camp 

The crimson loss. 

I am your pennies and your pounds ; 
I am your bodies on their rounds 

Of pain afar; 
I am you, doing what you would 
If you were only' where you could '■ — 

Your avatair. 

The cross which on my arm I wear, 
The flag which o'er my breast I bear, 

Is but the sign 
Of what you 'd sacrifice for him 
Who suffers on the hellish rim 

Of war's red line. 

GREY KNITTING 

KATHERINE HALE 
Something sings gently through the din of battle, 
Something spreads very softly rim on rim 
And every soldier hears, at times, a murmur 
Tender, incessant — dim. 

A tiny click of little wooden needles, 
Elfin amid the gianthood of war; 
Whispers of women, tireless and patient, 
Who weave the web afar. 



262 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Whispers of women, tireless and patient — 
' Foolish, inadequate ! ' we hear you say ; 
'Grey wool on fields of hell is out of fashion,' 
And yet we weave the web from day to day. 

And so each soldier, laughing, fighting — dying 
Under the alien skies, in his great hour. 
May listen, in death's prescience all-enfolding. 
And hear a fairy sound bloom like a flower — 

I like to think that soldiers, gaily dying 
For the white Christ on fields with shame sown deep 
May hear the tender sound of women's needles. 
As they fall fast asleep. 




Copyright by Clinedinst 



Newton D. Baker 



THE TASK OF THE RED CROSS 

NEWTON D. BAKER 

The human race is a waif left to die unless we, trustees, 
accept the task of rescuing it. 

I suppose there has not been, since the very early times 
in human history, a war in which slaughter was so casual 
as it is in this. . 

I speak of its casual character because for a great many 
hundred years we have been progressing in the direction 
of limiting the horrors of war to the combatants, and that 
in this Twentieth Century we should revert to the casual 
slaughter of children, to the improvident slaughter of 
women, to the theory of warfare by the extermination of 
peoples, and to the use of weapons of war like starvation 
and disease is an unthinkable reversion to barbarous type 
which it was the hope of the intelligent that the world had 
outgrown. 

We are entering the war in the firm belief and purpose 
of ending it in a victory for right — and we have not the 
slightest intention of stopping until that victory is 
achieved. 

Mad as the world seems to be, some day there will be 
reestablished on this stricken planet a peace which will be 
just and wise and permanent, just in proportion as America 
pours out her spiritual resources in ti^e waging of the war 
from now on and is heard at the conference table to chal- 
lenge the attention of mankind to the beauty of right- 
eousness among nations. Btit in the meantime, as the 
armies which are being called are trained and are led to 

263 



264 • THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

battle, all along the national wayside of every nation in 
the world, still crouch the terrified and trampled figures 
of the children of mankind, disowned, starving, and 
dying. There is no limit to it, and I shall not undertake 
to harrow your feelings — in fact, I am not certain that I 
could command myself to repeat the heart-rendering 
messages of intimate letters which I have seen with in 
the last day or two about Roimiania. But the call is 
limitless and it is to be made known to the hearts of 
the people of the United States, and we are going to 
endeavor to respond to this cry of distress. 

The Red Cross of the United States of America has set 
itself the great task of raising for, one might say, cosmic 
philanthropy, a sum equal to the destruction which the 
war entails in a day. 

The response which we ought to make ought to be 
limited only by the extent to which our sympathy, en- 
lightened by knowledge and stirred by imagination and 
then understepping rather than overstepping the mark, 
will enable us to make sacrifices for the greatest need the 
world has ever known. 



YOUTH SPEAKS TO YOUTH' 

From an American Student to the 

Girls of France 

To you, there in the van, 

Thronging hundreds of France, 

Who through dark mists march to the light. 

Forging a way toward the new dawning — 

^ These messages were really sent across the Atlantic Ocean by an 
American and a French girl. 



THE RED CROSS NURSES 265 

We come, we, the recruits. 

Adding strength to your strength — 

Youth to your youth — 

That when the mists clear and dawn lightens 

the wreck of the world, 
We may join in rebuilding. 

A French Girl Replies 

It was only a little river, almost a brook; it was called 
the Yser. One could talk from one side to the other with- 
out raising one's voice, and the birds could fly over it 
with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks 
there were millions of men, the one turned toward the 
other, eye to eye. But the distance which separated them 
was greater than the stars in the sky; it was the distance 
which separates right from injustice. 

The ocean is so great that the sea gulls do not dare to 
cross it. During seven days and seven nights the great 
steamships of America, going at full speed, drive through 
the deep waters before the lighthouses of France come 
into view; but from one side to the other hearts are 
touching. 



THE RED CROSS NURSES 

THOMAS L. MASSON 

Out where the line of battle cleaves 

The horizon of woe 

And sightless warriors clutch the leaves 

The Red Cross nurses go. 

In where the cots of agony 

Mark death's unmeasured tide — 



266 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Bear up the battle's harvestry — 
The Red Cross nurses gHde. 

Look ! Where the hell of steel has torn 
Its way through slumbering earth 
The orphaned urchins kneel forlorn 
And wonder at their birth. 
Until, above them, calm and wise 
With smile and guiding hand, 
God looking through their gentle eyes, 
The Red Cross nurses stand. 



WITH THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN FRANCE ^ 

HENRY P. DAVISON 

I never have known the morale as high all along the 
line and back of the line as it is today. And I believe 
the American Red Cross is more responsible for this than 
any other single agency. 

The purpose of the fight behind the line is to break 
down the morale of the civilian population to such a point 
that they will importune their governments for peace. 
It is the most dastardly, unrighteous, cruel, devilish plan 
which could be conceived. It is based upon the theory 
that the killing of four children out of five will induce 
the mother to implore her government to have the war 
stopped that her fifth child may live. It is carried on 
from the British Channel to the Swiss border and from 
the Swiss border to the^ Adriatic. It has resulted in the 
murder and maiming of thousands of women and children 
and the driving of hundreds of thousands from their 
homes. 

I wish I could give you a picture of one of those nights. 
We went into a town of about fifty thousand about six 
o'clock one evening. About half past seven we started 
over to the Red Cross canteen. As we went into the 
main street, I noticed a concourse of people all going in 
one direction. After walking along with them three or 
four minutes I said, "What is going on, what is this?" 
They said these people were moving out for the night to 
the caves. 



From a speech delivered in Chicago, May 23, 1918. 
267 



268 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

There were old men, women, and children. For 
instance, one would see a mother walking with a girl of 
fourteen, a girl of twelve, a child of seven, and a child of 
one in her arms, carrying a small mattress, pillows, any 
coverlets whatever, that they might have a night not of 
sleep, but of security in a cave a mile and a half outside 
the town. That was my first view of people seeking 
refuge from the aerial bombardment. 

I went over to our canteen. It had been an old ware- 
house and had been fixed up by camouflage artists. In 
the main room were tables where soldiers could have 
meals. Back of that was a large room with cots for the 
soldiers to sleep. Next to that was a room where the 
soldiers could take off their clothes and, while they were 
bathing, the clothes could be fumigated. 

I walked around in the crowd and in the cashier's office 
one of the girls stepped up and pulled down the window. 
I asked, "What has happened?" She said, "The raid 
is coming, we must get to a place of safety." I said, 
"You come with me." She said, "O, never. Do you 
think that I, as head of this canteen, could leave this 
building while there is a French soldier in it? Do you 
think an American woman could run from a bomb in 
the presence of a Frenchman?" 

Well, after a bit we went to the ahri, built of reinforced 
concrete, with sandbags over the top. It would hold, 
perhaps, one hundred people. The signal that the raid 
was over was sounded at half past ten and we went out. 
I asked, "Are you going home?" They said, "What, 
going home? We are open twenty-three hours a day. 
We close only between seven and eight in the morning 
that the place may be^cleaned." They went back and I 
went to the hotel. 



THE FEET OF THE CHILDREN 269 

We retired andjwere awakened about one o'clock by 
the breaking in of our windows. That indicated another 
air raid was on — and so, through the night, that town was 
bombarded. In the morning we saw the people going 
about more or less in their usual demeanor. Of course, 
they were paralyzed with fear, but there wasn't any sign 
of weakening. 

Three days later that town was evacuated by its 
civilian population. The soldiers of the French army 
remained, and you may know that the eighteen American 
women are still there running the canteen. They will 
continue to do so as long as there are any soldiers there. 



THE FEET OF THE CHILDREN 

NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH 

In far Arabia they tell the tale — 

A wondrous tale, e'en in the home of wonders — 

Of that great magic-worker, whose fine ear, 

Held to the ground in any desert's core, 

Yet could detect on Bagdad's stony ways 

The pattering of little children's feet 

And hear their laughter and their frolicking. 

A wondrous tale indeed; and yet today, 

In this new land that never held enchantment, 

Day after day the miracle is wrought again. 

No woman's ear that is not pressed to earth 

Each day she wakens, while with anguished heart 

She hears the echoing of children's feet, 

Bare feet and wayworn, in the wilderness. 



270 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Oh, little feet in Flanders and in France; 
Strayed feet in Belgium's vast orphanage; 
Feet that have never sinned and yet must bleed 
In Germany's stark homes and swollen graveyards; 
Small feet of woe in Russia's cruel snows ; 
Armenian feet and Polish, Serb and Austrian, 
We hear your terror in your pattering. 

We may not bear the load of anguish more; 
Each step falls like a weight of iron down. 
We feel the frozen touch, the icy chill. 
Of flesh that life may never warm again. 
Oh, feet unsheltered from the wintry blast, 
Dear feet that never walked uncompanied, 
God send you safely into paradise ! 



WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME 

JOHN HAY 

There 's a happy time coming, 

When the boys come home. 
There 's a glorious day coming, 

When the boys come home. 
We will end the dreadful story 
Of this treason dark and gory 
In a sunburst of glory. 

When the boys come home. 

The day will seem brighter 

When the boys come home. 
For our hearts will be lighter 

When the boys come home. 
Wives and sweethearts will press them 
In their arms and caress them. 
And pray God to bless them, 

When the boys come home. 

The thinned ranks will be proudest 

When the boys come home. 
And their cheer will ring the loudest 

When the boys come home. 
The full ranks will be shattered, 
And the bright arms will be battered. 
And the battle-standards tattered, 

When the boys come home. 
271 



272 THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 

Their bayonets may be rusty, 
When the boys come home, 

And their uniforms dusty, 
When the boys come home. 

But all shall see the traces 

Of battle's royal graces, 

In the brown and bearded faces, 
When the boys come home. 

Our love shall go to meet them, 

When the boys come home. 
To bless them and to greet them, 

When the boys come home; 

And the fame of their endeavor 

Time and change shall not dissever 

From the nation's heart forever. 

When the boys come home. 















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